On Hosea 6

God instructs Hosea to marry a prostitute who continues to be unfaithful when they’re married. It’s kind of a live action sermon illustration to describe Israel’s unfaithfulness to God, and which God is justified in punishing.  

Yet the prophet holds out hope that all can be restored if they go back to a God who waits for them. 

The words of verse 1 trouble me:

He has torn us to pieces
   but he will heal us;
he has injured us
   but he will bind up our wounds.

It bothers me that God is on record as being vengeful. 

There have been times when I thought God was hurting me deliberately. It wasn’t that he was standing back to let me reap from what I had sown, but as Hosea wrote, he was actively punishing me.

In order to find my spiritual equilibrium I had to forgive God for hurting me just as God chooses to forgive me for hurting Him. 

That sounds presumptuous in the context of my Christian theology, and no doubt people will want to straighten out my thinking.  But I doubt they’ll say anything that I hadn’t already considered. 

It’s what I had to do to be friends again with the God I serve.