To Love a Harlot

Of all the emotions and concepts in life I think love is the most interesting to me. I mean after all God's word is one big book on what love really looks like. God IS love. Love encompases all other emotions. One of my eigth grade students called me the other day asking for examples of patience in the Bible or at least ideas on how she could present it to her Bible study group at school. I brought up the idea of how God had patience in the old testament with His children. Over and over and over again they would abandon worshiping Him and then finally come back. It was a vicious cycle that we see throughout the old testament. I also brought up Hosea as almost a sum  up story. It is a fantastic picture of God's patience and love for His children, the very same ones that played the "harlot" with His love, so to speak. I was reading through some of Hosea this morning and I was struck with how God wanted Hosea to do this and have to deal with a wife that was gonna leave him and come back over and over. God was painting a vivid picture of His love for us. That love is foreign to this world and it's selfish motives. That love is something that shatters walls and mends broken hearts. I love the relentlessness that this love is. It isn't one that keeps count of how many times one walks away. It sees each time as a new start. That's how God sees us. That blows my mind, because the way I see it is "I messed up again! He has to be angry because I did this same thing 2 weeks ago...etc." He doesn't see it like that at all though. He promises that our slate is clean. What kind of love is that? It is something I don't deserve, that is for sure. Some of the verses that really illustrated this to me were Hosea..

1:2 When the Lord began to speak by Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea; " Go, take yourself a wife of harlotry, for the land has committed great harlotry by departing from the Lord." 

3:14 Therefore, behold, I will allure her, will bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfort to her. 

3:19 I will betroth you to Me forever; Yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and justice, in lovingkindness and mercy; 

3:29 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!"