Saturday, July 21: Hosea 10 - Word Pictures.

I love word pictures and scripture is filled with them. Hosea uses them regularly. Verse 7: Samaria and its king will float away like a twig on the surface of the waters. Does that communicate or what?!

Verses 11-12 paint a very different picture. Ephraim is a trained heifer that loves to thresh; so I will put a yoke on her fair neck. I will drive Ephraim, Judah must plow, and Jacob must break up the ground (11). Being a cow yoked for work wasn’t particularly appealing to me. Then again, cows like this are strong and able, the perfect animal to clear land and prepare it to produce crops. And God, after all, is the plowman.

I was impressed how Hosea altered this image into a call to spiritual maturity. Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing love, and break up your unplowed ground; for it is time to seek the LORD, until he comes and showers righteousness on you.

Sow … righteousness. I pondered what I have to do to sow righteous for myself. The character I need to develop, the attitudes I need to convey, the kind of speech I need to use and not use.

Sow … righteousness and reap … unfailing love. Reap unfailing love from whom? God? People? I suspect the latter is in view. God has promised His hesed (unconditional love). People, on the other hand, generally respond to the actions of others. Aren’t nice people, people full of God’s fruit, often rewarded with kindness and love from others? Ponder this…

Break up your unplowed ground, this picture launched me into thinking about the many hard places in my life that still need to be broken up… mean-spirited places, impatient places, prejudiced places.  It hit me; these are the very places where after I ‘break up the ground’, I need to sow righteousness.

The final words of the prophet became my prayer.

Oh, Lord God, even furloughed and planted land needs rain for crops to grow.  Please shower my life with Your gifts of mercy and love and righteousness. Without Your showers, I will forever be a barren and arid land. I can only do so much to grow.  Without Your blessing of showers, I will never grow.

Lord God, I will seek You… I will seek You until You come with Your grace-filled showers.

Through Jesus, my Lord, I pray. Amen.