That was one of my favourite choruses sang in church as a child. I must have sung it a million times! Living it has been the challenge. To turn from this world and keep my eyes on another world and importantly on Jesus is the call to us all.
Gomer had this same problem.
“Rebuke your mother, rebuke her, for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband. Let her remove the adulterous look from her face and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts.
Otherwise I will strip her naked and make her as bare as on the day she was born; I will make her like a desert, turn her into a parched land, and slay her with thirst.” (Hosea 2 v 2-3)
Hosea calls on the children (who are now adults probably) to help him with Gomer. She has gone again or it could be possible she never stopped committing adultery. “Go find you mother and do what you can to turn her around” is basically the message. What kind of man is this Hosea? Would not any other man just simply reject her completely after even one prostitution? But Hosea is not any other man. His name means Salvation. He is the prophet carrying a message told to get himself into this predicament so that He could proclaim God’s message to Israel from it.
The relationship has gone: she is not my wife and I am not her husband. We have nothing.
The provision was still there even though the relationship was gone. Gomer had a home, husband and family and even though she had so many blessings to change she kept drifting back to her old ways. Here comes the warning to the children that if Gomer didn’t stop it she would lose Hosea’s provision; she would not be clothed, she would have nothing left and she would be in a worst place than when he found her.
And like Gomer … Israel with their longing for other gods like Baal and Asherah are wandering away from God.
And like Israel … we with our ego’s and our eyes filled with ambition, desiring more and working hard to be noticed, being enticed with fame and fortune, reach out for the poisonous fruit to become someone. All the time we think we still have our relationship with God. But it is broken. It is distant now. And soon if we don’t stop it, we too will be broken.
Missions Paul 