On minor prophets and their prostitute wives*

Sometimes you read through Scripture and it totally messes with you. Enter Hosea. God basically told him to marry a prostitute as an illustration for how Israel was treating God. What's more, she left him and found another "lover" and then God told Hosea to go and get her back just like He had done with Israel.

What is going on here?

First, I think it messes with us because we have this working assumption that God always acts in ways that we perceive as good. So, when something we perceive as bad happens, we ask, "Where is God?" Our perception is not always God's reality. And our perception of what is good is not always what is actually good.

Second, God's greatest goal in our life is not to make us happy. In a beautiful analogy to marriage, God said it this way in Hosea 2:9:

I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion.

Those are God's ultimate goals for our life; Righteousness, justice, love and compassion.

Third, He doesn't call everyone to be a minor prophet. It's true that many of God's servants in Scripture had it rough. Isaiah had to walk around naked. Paul had a "thorn in his flesh" that he couldn't get rid of. Some of the things these men and women had to endure seemed very cruel. And yet, however unfair we might think it was, they seemed to think that God had a greater plan and that everything would turn out for their good in the end.

Most of us will not be called to bear the weight of something like Hosea. Yet we face our own challenges everyday. Maybe the most important thing we can learn from Hosea is not "why" they had to go through something tough, but "how" they made it through.

*Thanks to David Bazan for writing a song with that title. One of the best titles I've ever seen.