“Come back to me with all your heart, don’t let fear keep us apart”.
This is the opening line of the ‘Hosea Song’. It is an invitation to relook at our relationship with our God.
However, the operative word in this line is ‘fear’. God doesn’t want fear to keep us apart from Him. Yet, sadly, this is maybe the reason why we can easily distance ourselves from Him. Maybe we have grown up fearing the consequences of our indiscretions and have been in fear of God, the judge. We all tend to judge ourselves severely, yet quite often forget to give ourselves credit for all the good we do for others.
Sometimes we might stray a bit from our faith and our personal feelings of negativity kick in. We can perhaps see ourselves as doomed and therefore find it easy to give up on God. This situation might even cause us to forgo some, or even all, of our religious practices which help us maintain our faith. So, we stumble along through life, often feeling alone and deserted, yet determined, that if we have to, we can do this alone.
How sad it is if we might have grown up with this fearful attitude. How sad that we may have only seen God as a judge on high and not seen Him as a caring, loving God who dwells within each one of us.
Perhaps we have failed to realise as humans we are not perfect. Our heavenly Father, recognizing our plight, sent us Jesus as our Savior. He taught us about the unconditional love our God has for us. He suffered and died for our sins and rose again that we might be convinced He was who He said he was. His simple message was to love our God and to love one another.
Sometimes it can be good for us to take time out to do a personal stocktake and clean out our inner cupboards. As the Hosea Song says, “The wilderness will lead you to your heart where I will speak”. And the Holy Spirit who lives in us adds, “Long have I waited for your coming home to me and living deeply a new life”. Thus, we are all being given the invitation to strengthen our faith and relationship with our loving God. It is up to us when, and if, we choose to accept it.
I’m Peter Mack and that’s faith.