Returning to God

My vast experience off course has honed my abilities for ‘returning to God’.  I’m sure –given my history and my nature- that I will have ample opportunities to further adjust my thoughts and practices in that area.  In fact, returning to anything worthwhile is a struggle once you veer off course.

The amazing thing about returning to God is that we struggle with the concept for a time – long or short- and often lose sight of the way back.  It can seem quite daunting or nearly impossible to return to truth, the way, the source of life.  The junk between us and the light can seem immovable.  Yet the way back is always a surprise.  It begins with one word.  The word may be ‘help’ or ‘Papa’ or ‘LORD’ or ‘save’ or any number of others.  That one word begins the process and we are there.

The legalist in me fights against that.  It wants the human to make changes, to slog back through the mess that took me away.  It sets conditions and parameters and barriers to get over.  The human asks “What if?”

Yesterday I spent awhile in Ezekiel 23 and then in the book of Hosea. These are stories of betrayal. In both cases God used marriage and infidelity to illustrate the way his people treat him. It’s a nasty sordid story of wandering, bad priorities, selfish living and then loving our degradation.  Our relationship to the world brings confusion, produces unwanted offspring, and destroys honor and respect both inwardly and outwardly.  Our concentration is on human ability, human right, human suffering, human desire. Once there, the solutions we come up with become as despicable as the problem has become.  It’s really hard to look at.  What we followed was not only useless, it was harmful and became increasingly repulsive and more destructive.

Yet God shows undeserved, unrequited, and incomparable love in spite of evil. Both of these stories explain how redemption is based on true, enduring love, not on the deeds of the one being redeemed. Still, he shows the sorrow and affect of evil actions within the lives of those who betray his love and ignore his grace.
The invitation is "Return to your God; your sins have been your downfall. Take words with you and return."  The amazing part is the one word that starts it completes it regardless of the time involved and regardless of the word that we begin our sin offering with.  God knows the heart; turning back to him cannot be faked.  And so it begins with one word.
"We will never again say 'our God' to what our own hands have made because in you the fatherless find compassion.” 

Sometimes we learn the ultimate lessons.  At first when I read the above verse, it seemed disjointed and unbalanced. A further glance gave me too many thoughts and applications to put down here. But I will say that God is the ultimate Father and being without his presence and love for any time at all is demoralizing and brings hopelessness.  Any idol we set up –and we do set them up- will lead us to that state of hopeless living.  But God will tear them down with one word and draw the helpless child back to himself.
God says “I will heal their waywardness and love them freely.” Today we think God’s greatest healing would be cancer or MS or some other such thing.  We have so many confusing diseases, so many physical disorders and handicaps.  Yet God promises to heal our waywardness and love us freely.  That contemplation is an amazing place to go and stay awhile.

The book of Hosea ends with this declaration: “Who is wise? He will realize these things. Who is discerning? He will understand this: the ways of the Lord are right; the righteous walk in them but the rebellious stumble in them.”  

I ask myself just what the realization means.  It’s a story of grace, a story of redemption, of love so amazing that it uncompromisingly reclaims what is ultimately compromised.  I can walk in that.

But what is the place of stumbling for the rebellious in God’s way?  Perhaps it is the point that we can add nothing but a word and God will love us back into relationship and strip off our dishonor and clothe us in his righteousness.  Perhaps is it the concept that waywardness is just not a big deal because of grace. I don’t know the answer.  I’d rather avoid either bump and walk always with my God and Father.