The alter of success

Today, I opened my Bible and began reading. I landed in Hosea. Generally speaking, this is a dumb way to do Bible study. But this morning it worked. Oddly, Hosea is one of my favorite books. It's obscure, I know, but particularly those first few chapters tell an amazing story.

So Hosea (besides having an unfortuante name) was a prophet of God, a messenger. God told Hosea to take for himself an unfaithful wife. Weird. Hosea's wife, Gomer (another unfortunate name) is just as trampy after marriage as she was before. She bears several children by her lovers all while being married to Hosea. God told Hosea to name those children terrible things. Their names meant things like: "Not mine", and "Unloved". So Hosea did. Gomer eventually leaves Hosea, and ends up in slavery. God tells Hosea to buy her out of slavery, and bring her back into his home as a wife.

So what's this all about?

It's an elaborate metaphor for God's relationship to his unfaithful people, the nation of Isreal. Over and over agian Isreal is unfaithful to the True God. They collectively worship idols. They shame God with their unfaithfulness.

But then God says (speaking of his love, Isreal):

Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she will sing as in the days of her youth..."In that day" declares the Lord, "you will call me 'my husband' you will no longer call me 'my master.'

He changed the names of those who were called "not my people" to "sons of the living God"

I love it. What a powerful picture of God's redemptive heart. What a picture of his grace, and his relentless love.

It occured to me that we are a bit like trampy Gomer/Isreal. We shame ourselves, and our God when we buy into the lies of the culture...when we worship at the alter of success.

Here is what I mean. My friend, Cheryl, and her husband, Tim just brought their daughter home from China. Micayla Hong is 4 now, and had spent all of her life in an institution. They have not yet determined the extent of Micayla's disabilities. But they are significant.

Had Tim and Cheryl been looking for a good investment for 20K, by most people's standards bringing home Micayla wouldn't have been it. Micayla will undoubtedly make enormous strides in development in a nurturing home. But there are no guarantee's. And certainly, she is not, at this moment, the picture of health. She is wounded and needs much care.

We make a grave mistake when we equate value with performance. People are valuable because they are image bearers of the Most High God. Micayla Hong is a treasure. To say she is not is to bow down at the alter of success. We are shamed when our actions declare we value performance and success over the value of human life. And as a culture, we are shameful indeed.

When did children become a burden instead of a blessing? When did they become inconveniences rather treasures.

This is personal for me.

I constantly get stares when I go places with my 4 kids. "What kind of person chooses to have that many children?" I know that is what they are thinking. They would be appalled to know that our decision was deliberate, and we jumped through numerous hoops (and are still jumping) to bring the 4th into our home. AND she is at risk for delays...some potentially serious. We chose her. We love her. It has nothing to do with success, or status. To spend my life on her behalf would be a worthy endeavor. She is priceless. All of my kids are.

We are valuable because we are. Not because of what we can do, or what we can offer. We matter because God says we do. He longs to adopt us into His family, to give us a new name. He wants to allure us and speak tenderly to us. Even when what we do is unspeakable debauched we are valuable treasures.