July 8, 2024
Passage Read: Hosea 8-11
Meditation Verses: 11:1-5
Thought
This hits home. I am not the first father to experience this, nor will I be the last. Even God has endured the rejection of His sons. When they were young, He loved them and called them out of Egypt, out of the world. He taught them to walk, trained them, provided for them, carried them in His arms, healed them, but they didn't know it, they forgot it, it didn't register with them. Instead, they kept hearing the calls of others, who seemed more exciting to them, more attractive, better than the Lord, and they went after them, abandoning their Father. God led them with love, freed them from their burdens, fed them, provided everything they needed and more, but they used His blessings to make gods for themselves, to honor other gods. They went their own way, so God gave them other rulers who would not care for them as He did.
Application
This experience is truly universal. Some families avoid it, at least on the surface. But how often do the sons consider themselves wiser than their father, even in the "good" families. God's own children treated Him with contempt. Even today, those of us who call Him Father still think we're wiser than Him in so many ways. We're able to discern what command, what ways we should follow and what we don't have to anymore. We don't seek to know and do His heart. We seek to get by with the appearance of honor, while our hearts are far from Him, while we sit in judgment on His Word and His behavior. We have all kinds of reasons for casting His law behind our backs. We are faithless sons indeed, and so He turns us over to rulers who neither know nor love Him or us. And we can't tell the difference. "Let God be true and every man a liar." God alone is right, and I must justify His every command, request and action, everything He says and does is correct, so I must accept and obey. I want to know Him for real, not just claim it or demand that He accept that I know Him when I reject many things He stands for. I don't want to be the prodigal son who rejected his father outright and went to live completely for his flesh, and I don't want to be the older brother who served in his house but never knew his father, who was secretly embittered against him. I want to be the son who knows his father is right, no matter how things look to me, who recognizes my own ignorance and seeks to learn from the father so that I can understand his decisions and choices, especially the ones that seem so wrong.