In December, I was blessed to be able to attend the Overland staff Christmas party, which took place at the home (down in the Cocoa, FL area, near our office) of the parents of one of our missionaries. Besides an INSANE amount of food and a bounce house for the kids, the main event of the party was a white elephant gift exchange. With the gift I brought, (the selection of which was stressful for me; I’m not very creative with gift ideas), I did my best to be gender neutral, as there were both men and women in attendance, some married, some single. I was surprised however, how many gifts were NOT gender neutral. Aside from several gift cards, there were many candles and scented body lotions/bath products, and it was equally hilarious and pitiful watching the guys try to convince a female to trade in one of the restaurant or Itunes gift cards to loose them of their scented cosmetics. The gift that I ended up with wasn’t much less feminine: a candle, some chocolate, and a book. Little did I realize in the moment, however, how God-ordained it was that I unknowingly chose that package.
The book inside was Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers. I had heard of it before, but had not read it, nor remembered much about it. If you’re not familiar, it’s a fictional (but stunning) retelling of the story of Hosea and Gomer–the way she uses bold and italics to differentiate between the voice of God, the voice of the devil, and the voice of the flesh, ah, it gives me goosebumps! It you haven’t read it, go buy it RIGHT NOW! (I’m dead serious). Last I saw, it was on sale for like half-off on Amazon.
Since it was the week of Christmas, and therefore, I didn’t have anything going on (no school for winter break and no ministry meetings due to the holiday), I decided to sit down and explore its pages. I knew I would enjoy the story, but I DID NOT expect anything else about it.
First and foremost, I am NOT (I can’t emphasize that enough) a reader. Yes, it is a discipline that I am trying to learn (and yes, it is a discipline for me), but A, it’s difficult for me to sit that still for that long, and B, my mind goes into la-la-land or simply begins drifting to the other 50 million things I need to or could be doing EXTREMELY easily, even when my eyes are still moving and my fingers still turning the pages, and even if I read out loud. So I literally can “read” pages and pages of a book without actually reading a single word. It’s really pretty annoying, especially when I actually need or want to read something. Actually, sometimes it’s discouraging and makes me not even want to try to read, which means it can take me a long while to finish a book, if I even finish it at all. All this to say that I didn’t have the highest hopes for this 450-page novel. So, needless to say that I was SHOCKED out of my mind when I finished the entire book in less than a day and a half. Other than to sleep, eat, and complete the digestive cycle, I literally couldn’t put it down. Even more shocking, I read every single word, without having to go back and re-read because my brain wasn’t paying attention. Hashtag (or pound sign, as Pastor Rodney says) WHAAAAT.
Second, the only other time I put the book down was when I was crying so hard that I couldn’t see through my tears. And it wasn’t just because of the story line either. In fact, only about 15 percent of the tears the couch, bed, and pillow soaked up were because of the story line. I never would have expected what I felt while reading this book. Mainly, I didn’t expect how much I would relate to Angel (the story’s Gomer). I won’t spoil any of the story, but let’s just say that she had been through a lot of junk in her life (you should already know that she’s a prostitute), and I haven’t been through any of that, after all. But her emotions, the way her past affected her thinking–those are things that really resonated in my heart of hearts. No, I’ve never been a prostitute, but I have allowed my heart and soul to be treated as such.
In response to how much I related to Angel’s thoughts and emotions, I also tearfully cooed over the way Michael Hosea (need I clarify that he’s the story’s Hosea?) responded to her, the way he loved her with such tenderness and tried to help her heal, and I sobbed over my own desire for a man to love and treat me like that.
Fast forward to a little over three months later, and I found in myself a desire to read Redeeming Love again, this time taking about a week, which was still incredibly impressive for me. I’m not normally someone who would re-read books, short of and some passages by Tozer and CS Lewis (and the Bible obviously, but I didn’t intend to include that here because it’s not just a book), but with a novel with so many pages and different events, I decided to re-dive in (and I found that I remembered even less of the story-line’s events than I thought).
Several chapters in, I found myself laying on a lounge chair in the backyard, once again wishing for my own Michael Hosea, the man who would love me so tenderly and beautifully that it would completely erase all the hurts from my past, my heart aching with the longing within the depths of my soul. So I lifted my head from my reading, glanced up at the bright blue, Spring sky and prayed, “Lord, where is my Michael Hosea?” Not a moment later, a response.
“I want to be your Michael Hosea.”
Woah.
My heart stood still in my chest, if only for a moment. My eyes immediately welled with tears. My body grew hot and cold at the same time. I immediately realized that although I knew the story was ultimately about God, I was so focused on my desire for earthly romance that I was missing the whole point of the book. The redeeming love wasn’t Michael Hosea’s; it was God’s.
God wants to be our Hosea, YOUR Hosea.
Regardless of your relationship status, God created earthly relationships to be a model of the relationship He desires with us, and that includes the beauty and tenderness and romance of it. It is no coincidence that women have an innate desire to be pursued and romanced, and it’s no result of the fall either. God put that desire within us so that we’ll realize that desire is met by Him–Jesus is our Bridegroom, our Beloved, and He pursues and romances us in ways that only He can.
“You’ll be called Hephzibah (My Delight), and your land Beulah (Married), Because God delights in you and your land will be like a wedding celebration. For as a young man marries his virgin bride, so your builder marries you, And as a bridegroom is happy in his bride, so your God is happy with you.” – Isaiah 62:4b-5 (MSG)
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