Difficult Times

We all have difficult times in our lives. Hosea recalls difficult times in the lives of the Isrealites. The Northern Kingdom was coming to an end and the people had fallen away from proper worship to idolatry. Recall that the United Monarchy had split up soon after the death of Solomon. King Rehoboam led the Northern Kingdom of the Isrealites, while Jeroboam was called from Egypt to lead a rebellion against him. The insurgency succeeded and the Southern Kingdom of Judah split off. The Northern Kingdom entered a period of stagnation and decline and things steadily got worse until about 720 B.C., when after a succession of weak kings fell one by one to murder, the kingdom of Israel was finally defeated by the Assyrian Empire.

Hosea prophecied in the waning days of his kingdom. His book is full of anger and pain. Hosea simply rails against his people for losing focus: losing their faith in God, letting the practice of religion go, and giving themselves up to petty personal intrigues. No wonder there are so many references to whoredom. Israel has prostituted itself before God. He prophecied that this would all end badly. And sure enough, it does. I find it impossible to read Hosea without feeling his pain.

There are also echos in Acts here, both unsettling and uplifting. Unsettling because Paul (tradition has it) will himself be killed soon. Uplifiting, because of the work he does along the way. He is now on his path back to Jerusalem and his travels are accomanied by a kind of a drumbeat, a tempo that foretells his eventual martyrdom in Rome. Hosea bemoaned the loss of an old kingdom, while Paul, even with his own death, worked to establish a new one.

What must it feel like, to watch all your earthly exitstence be ripped from you? To see your beloved institutions become dust? Your traditions forgotten? Your life torn from your body? To bear witness to so much loss? Can the human heart contain so much pain? But God sustains his people, even through adversity, so the grand arc of the Old Testament offers support. So does the smaller arc of Paul's travels in Acts, as does our own yearly Lenten journey from adversity to hope; or even our weekly trip from Friday to Sunday; from sunrise to sunset; from this moment to the next.