Today’s passage is Hosea 8. God warns that destruction is coming to Israel because of their waywardness, setting up kings for themselves without consulting God, worshipping idols and becoming just like the other nations around them. Because they pay lip service only to God and sought out help from Assyria, they will be swallowed up by powerful neighbours and punished by God.
8:4. What kings have you set up in your life?
8:7. What wind do you sow?
8:9. How are you like a wandering donkey?
8:9. Wandering Donkey
On Wednesday before worship I shared my testimony with a young man looking for his direction in life. In listening to myself, I saw two things.
The first was my waywardness, my turning away from God to pursue my own twisting and turning path.
The second was how God has steadfastly guided me to where I am now.
I couldn’t see God’s hand in my life as I lived it because I was a lot more interested in my own hands. But looking back as I shared my life, it seemed obvious what God was doing to me, for me, and for his own inscrutable purposes.
My life is a case of sowing the wind (7), expending my energy on the empty pursuit of gratification and running away from responsibility, duty and righteousness.
Unlike Jesus in Luke 9:51, I did not set my face resolutely towards Jerusalem even after being called to faith.
My life, as I shared it, seemed to be like the opening verses of Ecclesiastes: “Meaningless! Meaningless! Utterly meaningless!”
I looked for meaning in all the wrong places: sex, travel, education, martial arts, extreme sports, writing.
I knew something of who God was but I did not, as Solomon repeatedly said, chase knowledge of him as a treasure.
I did not become wise because I wanted to be happy and carefree like the grasshopper in the fable.
Those were the kings I served: happy, childish irresponsibility. I did not want to be a godly ant, steadfast and humble in a serving life.
Like Israel wandering alone like a wild donkey to Assyria (9), I too tried to disavow myself and who God made me by trying to change my citizenship from Canadian to European, harkening back to my Polish, Irish and British ancestors, looking to a place of culture and power to wrap my emptiness in.
Didn’t work.
My efforts were rejected.
Canadian I remain.
Christian I am.
God wouldn’t let me go despite my running after false gods even as I gave lip service to him.
My salvation was important to him and he lopped off my branches and cut me down to a small stump out of which he has allowed a new leaf to grow here in Wooridle in Korea (Is. 6:13). How grateful I am!
Application: repent of my grumbling against having to spend Friday night and Saturday with my fellow Sunday School teachers instead of what I wanted to do with my time.
Lord, let me not be the wandering donkey seeking worldly power and status instead of serving you with love and gratitude.
