Scripture

Hosea 6:6-7 (New Living Translation)

“I want you to show love, not offer sacrifices. I want you to know me more than I want burnt offerings. But like Adam, you broke my covenant and betrayed my trust.”

Consider

We read in the book of Hosea passage after passage of scathing indictments against Israel for her faithlessness. God repeatedly pronounces his anger and judgment against her. Then, like an unexpected arrow of light breaking through a dark sky, this tender passage emerges, giving us a glimpse of God’s heart.

Israel, like Hosea’s prostitute-wife, Gomer, had run after idols and betrayed her covenant vow to love and know God. In these two verses God shows us that beneath his anger lies a deep longing for his people and hurt over their betrayal. In Chapter 7 God expresses his desire to heal Israel rather than to punish her, but her sins are too grievous to escape consequences.

In our human relationships we follow a similar pattern of voicing our anger and clamoring for justice, even as our hearts are breaking over the pain of betrayal and loss of connection. Like God, we want our loved ones to love us and to know us. Biblical knowing is more than mere sexual knowing, as when Adam knew Eve and she conceived. Like God, we want intimate connection of mind and heart with each other. We want to be known, to be told by others, “I see who you are. I hear you. I understand you. I fully comprehend your view of things, and it makes perfect sense to me. I accept you exactly as you are.”

God longs for faithful relationships, and because we are made in his image, we yearn for the same thing. We look to each other to provide faultless loyalty, trust, and intimacy. We long for perfect understanding. Like God, however, we are doomed to disappointment because humans are incapable of sustaining perfect relationships. Only God Himself can provide us with the perfect love and intimate knowing that we crave.

God’s solution for maintaining connections with imperfect humans is grace. He knows that even when we want to love and know him perfectly, we will fail and need his forgiveness to keep the relationship going. This same grace helps us to keep our human relationships going as well. Loving kindness, forgiveness, patience, compassion—these graces allow us to accept imperfections in each other without losing the connection.

Pray

FATHER, thank you for your gift of grace. Thank you that no matter what I do, you lift the stain of sin from me and bathe me in your love. Help me to recognize when my anger and desire to punish are only masks to hide my pain and grief over a lost connection. Give me a heart to know people as they need to be known and grace to overlook their imperfections as you overlook mine.

Reflect

1 Samuel 16:7; Jeremiah 9:24

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Name one aspect of yourself that you wish others could understand perfectly.