Northern Israel above Lake Galilee and towards Lebanon is really beautiful. There are no mountains like the southern areas around Jerusalem, and the balmy Mediterranean climate makes for several crops a year. No wonder the Northern tribes of Israel loved living there and saw themselves really blessed! But, as nomads used to desert conditions, they looked to the locals for guidance as to how to make good use of the land – and the Canaanites taught that land fertility was a sex thing. If you encouraged sex, you encouraged the land to grow. What idiots! said Hosea the prophet; how could the chosen people of God give up on God and believe that human sex could influence the climate? As Hosea writes, [Israel] has not acknowledged that I was the one who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil, who lavished on her the silver and gold— which they used for Baal. Hosea 2:8 [NIV]
What pathetic verses! God gave the wonderful gifts of the land to the people but they chose to give their thanks to Baal – the sex god.
Come on! says Hosea, let's go right back to the beginning, when you were my people:
"Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she will sing as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt. Hosea 2:14-15.
Isn't it odd that we more often find God in the desert than in plenty? It is certainly the experience of many, including me, that when the good times come we are tempted away from God, but in the desert: in the difficult times, we recognise our dependence on him. The good life comes from those times, and maybe we need to be led into the desert ourselves to hear God speaking.
In that day, concludes Hosea in chapter 2
I will plant her for myself in the land; I will show my love to the one I called 'Not my loved one.' I will say to those called 'Not my people,' 'You are my people'; and they will say, 'You are my God.'"
A thought: the desert may be too far away – how about a retreat?
Alan Cartwright
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