Today, read Hosea 12 - 13. Hosea recounts, one more time, the case God presents against His people.
Why does history matter? What purpose is served by looking back to the past and remembering your roots and your ancestry? I am writing this the week before Thanksgiving, 2011. There will be family gatherings all around our country next week. Some will be pleasant and bring great joy. Some will radiate pain and loss. Some will reopen wounds that have never healed. But in them all will be a remembering of past - a remembering of people no longer present at the table - a remembering of history for each family.
God does that for Israel in Hosea 12. He walks the people back through their heritage ... back to Jacob. Jacob was a man who came from a family where competition and jealousies had played a significant role. He was a deceiver ... had to run from home to protect his own life ... he cheated and lied. He then became the recipient of cheating and lying from his future father-in-law. But when he matured ... he had a tenacity for God that marked him, a hunger for God that drove him. So God reminds Israel of those humble beginnings ... certainly not rich and noble and gentrified!
He then reminds them that they had even been slaves. They had even been nomads living in tents with no land to call their own. Such humble beginnings for a people. But they had forgotten. They had become arrogant.
Hosea 12:8 "Ephraim boasts, 'I am very rich; I have become wealthy. With all my wealth they will not find in me any iniquity or sin.'"
You see ... they equated material wealth with favored position with God. They had forgotten their weakness and their dependency upon God. That nation of people had evolved to the point of thinking that THEY were something!
Our beginnings in this country were humble as well. We were formed by outcasts from other lands. And we, like Ephraim, have forgotten. Our behaviors often mirror the words of Ephraim in Hosea 12:8. We are very rich ... so no one can find any fault with us ... right?!
I believe that God would call to us ... as He did to His people so many centuries before ...
Hosea 12:6 "But you must return to your God; maintain love and justice, and wait for your God always." The New American Standard version translates these words with "observe kindness and justice."
Since you and I have no power to invoke those principles on a national level ... I suggest we practice them within our own small circles!
My prayer for me this day and this coming week ... my prayer for you ... is that we practice kindness and love with all we encounter, even those that are difficult to love. May we practice justice and fairness in our interactions this coming week. And when you feel that you just cannot do it ... remember from where you came ... remember your history ...
"I've been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live but Christ lives in me." (Galatians 2:20)
And, my friends, Christ CAN do it! Let Him live through you ...
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