As Sure As the Dawn

Minor Musings | Hosea 6a

Break-ups are hard.  No question about it.  Ever been through one? 

The emotions; the mountain range of feelings with all the peaks and valleys, require knack to maneuver gracefully. 

It’s my fault… 

No, it’s her fault!

Up and down, around and around.  Thoughts play tricks on us.  The whole dramatic episode can be maddening. 

Hosea 5 leaves us with a break-up.  Verse 15 lands with YHWH God retreating to His holy hill.  He reclines on His throne and waits for His cheating Bride to come around. 

Hosea 6:1-3 then, she comes around…sort of.

“Come!”  It begins; an invitation.  A hopeful voice in the crowd pipes up amidst the mourning.

“Let’s head back to where we’re from you guys!”  A rallying cry to drown out the wailing self-pity and anger.

Though gracious, YHWH was not gentle in sending His people away.  He had no reason to be.  The bitter biting ache of adultery over and again exhausted His patience.    No, He was not gentle in the break-up. 

But He’ll be gentle in the make-up. 

He tore them and struck them and graciously left them alone.  But he’ll heal them and bind them and graciously gather them back in.  God is gracious in all His ways.

Maybe you’ve noticed this in the past.  Maybe you’re noticing it right this very now.  In our disobedience, He presses us to the brink of disaster; to the precipice of peril.  And we linger there.  We kind of like it there.  We make ourselves a victim there and we get some strokes from folks there.  We tend to destroy ourselves there. 

But He revives us.  Hosea 6:2 is one of the most important verses in the Minor Prophets if you’re willing to carefully consider the allusion.  Find it and read it and be floored by what it suggests! 

As the Father raised the Son on the third day, so, “on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before Him!”  Imagine it all…  The sin, the discipline, the consequence, the coming-to-senses, the return; the whole dramatic episode is one great rescue effort put forth. 

Then the reality hits, verse 3, that to live before Him is to really know Him. 

Keep reading in the verse…  He is steady and present and as “sure as the dawn.”  Again imagine it all…  Where does the dawn come from?  It’s just there every morning, and after the cold wintery fleshly season of our sin, the dawn silently ascends with spring rains to nourish the earthen crust of our souls.  He is refreshing and welcome.

As we press into His presence in humility and gratitude, he presses into us with steadfast love and faithfulness.  As you and I come to Him, so He comes to us.  We can count on it like the dawn.