God tells Hosea: go marry a woman who will be unfaithful to you. Have children with her. Name the children names that symbolize judgment. Love a wife who doesn't love you back. It's the most difficult calling in Scripture - to enact the relationship between God and unfaithful Israel through his own broken marriage.
Hostea does it. He marries Gomer, she's unfaithful, he buys her back, he loves her despite her infidelity. His marriage is a living prophecy.
I was in a relationship with someone who struggled with addiction and betrayal. For a long time I thought my job was to be faithfully loving and have them eventually reciprocate. But that's not how it works. And reading Hosea, I realized: this is what God does with us. God loves us despite our unfaithfulness. We keep leaving, and God keeps taking us back. Hosea's marriage teaches that at a visceral level.
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