‘Mercy is shown.’

Life, what is the meaning of life?

Surely living knowing God’s Love and Devotion to God because of God’s Devotion to us, with us, for us. Trusting God is from seeing and believing in His Faithfulness – and from thousands of years of unfaithfulness by people, God STILL wants not just a civil relationship but a SACRED one. He looks to us as a bride for a husband and more than that, in Hosea the prophet’s writing, a husband taking back a very adulterous wife, a people who worshipped fake made up Gods with the real stuff God gave them. GOD HAS MERCY IN ORDER TO RESTORE THEN RESTART THE RELATIONSHIP. 

God IS Love. When people (us too) have love that is misdirected, squandered elsewhere, and start chasing after second best that is a falsehood and does not even exist, that is not devotion. The meaning of life is devotion to the Life-Giver not the life style. 

I was watching cats yesterday morning,  they are more comfortable with me now after a week and two cats came up for pets even, the reserved one only came for the food, she and they are devoted to their owner more than me, good, and yet interesting as they share thankfulness, but you know their loyalty is reserved. The dog at my neighbors, I went to see yesterday evening, was at first apprehensive until he heard my voice and when I saw him recognizing me, I even got a tail wag. Immediately I let him outside to do his business. He had refused to acknowledge another neighbor earlier in the day, shaking and too freaked out to trust, he was not comfortable for someone he didn’t know well. I fed him and waited around to give company, the dog however immediately was pining for his owners, glued to the windows, loyal, wanting, waiting. And oh the political canvasser knocking on the door got an earful! Protective, knowledgeable, devoted. Imagine if we were to be that devoted to God and shook off anyone and anything that was not our real devotion. 

God Almighty provides. A people provided for in old testament times, you would expect, would be the people to acknowledge that He DOES provide. And God asks this. Yet they (and we) get distracted and lose touch. And Hosea’s writing about the unfaithfulness of the people of Israel and Judah worshiping Baal, a false god, could ALSO mean all our unfaithfulness to what we cling to besides the One True God. We thank things and people before God, whereas we should thank God for people, provisions, and hope.

When fear begets falseness, steady devotion keeps us connected. Wisdom helps us wait on God, and be wandering less than we would if we did not already know God provides.

And we DO know God provides.

Devotion is a way of life, devotion with meaning, let us acknowledge and recognize God’s blessings and correction.  Devotion, a way of life, because God stays devoted to us.

Amen

“… In lovingkindness and mercy; I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness, And you shall know the Lord.”

—

Hosea 2 NKJV – The Lord’s Love for His Unfaithful People

Say to your brethren, ‘My people,’ And to your sisters, ‘Mercy is shown.’

God’s Unfaithful People – “Bring charges against your mother, bring charges; For she is not My wife, nor am I her Husband! Let her put away her harlotries from her sight, And her adulteries from between her breasts; Lest I strip her naked And expose her, as in the day she was born, And make her like a wilderness, And set her like a dry land, And slay her with thirst.

“I will not have mercy on her children, For they are the children of harlotry. For their mother has played the harlot; She who conceived them has behaved shamefully. For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers, Who give me my bread and my water, My wool and my linen, My oil and my drink.’

“Therefore, behold, I will hedge up your way with thorns, And wall her in, So that she cannot find her paths. She will chase her lovers, But not overtake them; Yes, she will seek them, but not find them. Then she will say, ‘I will go and return to my first husband, For then it was better for me than now.’ For she did not know That I gave her grain, new wine, and oil, And multiplied her silver and gold — Which they prepared for Baal.

“Therefore I will return and take away My grain in its time And My new wine in its season, And will take back My wool and My linen, Given to cover her nakedness. Now I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, And no one shall deliver her from My hand. I will also cause all her mirth to cease, Her feast days, Her New Moons, Her Sabbaths — All her appointed feasts.

“And I will destroy her vines and her fig trees, of which she has said, ‘These are my wages that my lovers have given me.’ So I will make them a forest, And the beasts of the field shall eat them. I will punish her For the days of the Baals to which she burned incense. She decked herself with her earrings and jewelry. And went after her lovers; But Me she forgot,” says the Lord.

God’s Mercy on His People

“Therefore, behold, I will allure her, Will bring her into the wilderness, And speak comfort to her. I will give her her vineyards from there, And the Valley of Achor as a door of hope; She shall sing there, As in the days of her youth, As in the day when she came up from the land of Egypt.

“And it shall be, in that day,” Says the Lord, “That you will call Me ‘My Husband,’ And no longer call Me ‘My Master,’ For I will take from her mouth the names of the Baals, And they shall be remembered by their name no more. In that day I will make a covenant for them With the beasts of the field, With the birds of the air, And with the creeping things of the ground. Bow and sword of battle I will shatter from the earth, To make them lie down safely.

“I will betroth you to Me forever; Yes, I will betroth you to Me In righteousness and justice, In lovingkindness and mercy; I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness, And you shall know the Lord.

“It shall come to pass in that day That I will answer,” says the Lord;

“I will answer the heavens, And they shall answer the earth. The earth shall answer With grain, With new wine, And with oil; They shall answer Jezreel. Then I will sow her for Myself in the earth, And I will have mercy on her who had not obtained mercy; Then I will say to those who were not My people, ‘You are My people!’ And they shall say, ‘You are my God!’ ”