"She stands outside in the cool, refreshing rain, allowing it to run in rivulets across her cheeks and down her lips. She is like the lily of the valley that spreads its fragrance across the fields or like the lush, abundant grapes that make men glad. Fertility and fruitfulness, celebration and wild abandon—these are the forces that rise and surge within her"
Young, beautiful, and bold, she is always smiling, flashing her big, dark eyes, attracting inevitable attention. God knows how easy it would be to entice her admirers into showering her with gifts of silver and gold. She is determined to squeeze every ounce of sweetness from life.
Gomer was the wife of Hosea. The early days of their marriage were beautiful as their love began to blossom.
It was after the birth of their son Jezreel that Hosea seems to have noticed a change in Gomer. She became restless and unhappy.
However , He went on preaching and encouraging the wayward nation to turn from its sin and trust God for deliverance from the threat of surrounding nations.But Gomer seemed less and less interested in his ministry. At a point,she found it very embarrassing to be known as the prophets wife and so she
began to find other interests to occupy herself and spent more time away from home. She actually yearned for someone she can truly love and relate with.
Eventually,she leaves Hosea and abandons her children. Throwing off every constraint, she begun to lead a life of prostitution. For a while it pleased her.
She does what she
wants as and when she wants to do it. Her lovers say nothing disagreeable but only what she longed to hear; that she was the most stunning and exciting woman they have ever known. She felt enriched by all the gifts they gave; silver and gold, wool and linen, wine and oil and everything that made life flashy.
But it was not quite enough. Something was still missing. What could it be?
That something turned out to be someone — a man she met whose charms were greater than her own.
She loved to lean against his chest and feel his strong encircling arms. A man of influence and quick wit.Her lover knew exactly how to please her. As long as he was near, she felt so secure. As long as she revered him, he was glad to stay.
But things begun to turn. He was away more than she liked, and he was not always as attentive as she thought he should be. Then she begun to cling and quiz him about where he had been and who he had been with. The more she asked, the less he told her. The more she pursued; the more he backs away until at last he vanished. Left alone, she begun to feel empty, run out of money and started to frail so she sold herself off to the sex slave market.
Hosea goes looking for her as God had asked him to but had found her with another man who was demanding a price for her.
He actually paid the man off and brought Gomer home, and eventually restored her to her position as his wife.
So Gomer, who has lived a dissolute life, returns home to live with Hosea, a husband she does not deserve.
She had broken her husband's heart more than once but she knew not how hard it was for Hosea to marry her when he did. She had no inkling that God had instructed him to "Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry, and have children of harlotry; for the land commits flagrant harlotry, forsaking the Lord” (Hos. 1:2).
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what a man Hosea was!! Why can't he let her go and find himself another woman? Why: are the women on Earth finished? Why did he even get married to a prostitute in the first place?
Trust you me, those were some of the things that run through my mind after reading about Hosea and Gomer's love story . But you see God is not a man.
He is not like us who easily judges and condems others because of the lives they have lived in the past or even in the present.
God is Hosea. We sin against him every minute of our short lives here on Earth but he still loves us dearly and forgives us each and every time.
You may want to stop judging already; God uses broken people to glorify his kingdom....
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Photo from Pinterest
Book- Less than Perfect (broken men and women from the Bible) by Anna Spangler.
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