A whirlwind will sweep them away, and their sacrifices will bring them shame. – Hosea 4:19

Today’s Scripture Reading (December 7, 2016): Hosea 4

Comedian Louie Anderson has led a somewhat tortured life, at least at times. The experience doesn’t seem to be unusual for a comedian. The funniest people that I know are often the ones who have suffered through the most. For Anderson, gambling and alcohol have led him into the path of various scandals. Maybe the most prominent of the scandals was his supposed propositioning of a man named Richard John Gordon in a casino in the late 1990’s. Gordon threatened to take the story to the tabloids, and Anderson feared what that might do to his career, especially because Anderson, at the time, was starring in a family-oriented television show, the animated “Life with Louie.” So Anderson paid $100,000 in hush money to keep the story out of the newspapers. But when Gordon raised the dollar amount of his silence to $250,000, Anderson decided it was time to take the situation to the police.

Unlike many, Anderson seems to admit his demons freely. “I felt ashamed for what I had done. I don't have any excuses. I did what I did. I take full responsibility for myself and my actions. I wouldn't pawn this off on anybody. I'm sorry it happened. And I hurt people.” One of the first steps of recovery is admitting our mistakes – and our sins. We hear way too many excuses in our culture for our society to be a healthy one. Sometimes it is a healthy breath of fresh air just to hear someone say, “Yep, I did that, and I am sorry.”

This is Hosea’s message to Israel. The seventeenth-century theologian, Matthew Henry, summed up this verse this way – “Those who are not disturbed in their sin, will be destroyed for their sin.” Our excuses quickly become our beliefs. And our sacrifices, if we bother to make them at all, are worthless because we see nothing wrong with what we are doing. There is no motive for life change, and repentance isn’t even in our vocabulary. We find our way into the company of people who are just like us, and we are swept away.

The first step toward health is always admitting that we are wrong - that our repentance is needed if we are going to walk into our future healthier than we have lived out our past. But excuses are still a lot easier than life change – so as long as our excuses are working, we will stick with them. And we will exchange health for the whirlwind, and truth for the meaningless sacrifice that just seems to heap up our shame.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Hosea 5