Today’s Scripture Reading (December
5, 2016): Hosea 1
She walked
into church every Sunday morning with her bright orange industrial ear plugs
firmly in place. The music was too loud,
and she complained about it almost every week. If the worship team had featured
a band, as it does in many churches now, maybe the ear plugs would have been
better understood. But in this church,
there was no band, just a piano and an organ that every week played out the
great hymns of the church. The musicians were incredible
and had taken their positions at their instruments, which sat side by side on
the left end of the platform, for
decades. But for at least one person, their expertise was not appreciated. The
music was too loud.
In private
discussions, the older woman with the earplugs was
discussed periodically. What could be
done about her problem? Should the
music be somehow toned down? Maybe an electric keyboard could be played instead
of the piano, giving some more volume control? But the problem didn’t seem to
be in the instruments. No one, other than
the lady with the orange ear plugs, thought that the music was loud. They loved to hear the majestic sounds
the emanated from the organ – and the pounding of the keys on the piano.
The problem
seemed to lie with the woman with the
earplugs. She lived alone in an apartment. Company seldom invaded her private
space. The television, which sat in the corner, was rarely turned on. The stereo collected dust and was rarely listened to. She existed for six
days in this place of absolute silence. And when you live in silence, even a whisper seems loud. So, on the one day of
the week when she ventured away from her quiet
home, she went to church where the organ and piano played, and the people
laughed and talked and sang, and the cacophony of noise was just too much. So
she wore her orange ear plugs to try to
cope.
Hosea never
states his place of origin, but it appears he was from Israel or Samaria in the
north. If so, he is the only northern prophet of that time whose words survive
to be read by us. The Talmud states that he
was the greatest prophet of generation. He prophesied for sixty years into the
silence of Israel. His story of being commanded by God to marry an unfaithful
woman is unlike any story that we have ever heard. We are not sure if he lived long enough to experience the destruction of
Israel by the Assyrians, but he definitely saw it prophetically (Return, Israel, to the Lord your God. Your
sins have been your downfall! – Hosea 14:1). His voice, like that of
Elijah and Elisha, tried to break the God-silence in the idol-laden north.
He is often seen as the prophet of doom,
but he is also the prophet of restoration – and he firmly believed that God could restore even the most evil of cultures if they would only turn back to him.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Hosea 2
& 3
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