On The Auction Block

“The LORD said to me, ‘Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the LORD loves...’ So I bought her...” Hosea 3:1-2a.

This is quite a heartbreaking image when we really understand what was happening in this passage. Gomer had prostituted herself to men to the point that she had sold herself into slavery. Someone owned her other than the one who loved her. Hosea had a broken heart and had to deal with everything that came along with it...betrayal...rejection... abandonment. And yet, his first love was God who instructed him to go to the auction block, bid on what used to be his and surrender his hurt and heartbreak. This must have seemed impossible...to lay down his own rights and entitlement, picking up the will of God. How nervous he must have been standing there waiting for them to bring Gomer up on the platform for bidding. Did his heart break a little more when he first saw her and she was covered with shame, dirt and all of the markings of the world? Did the emotions of hurt and disbelief come flooding in again when their eyes met? What bridged this unity allowing them to receive each other again? That bridge was the love of the Lord and we have that same love to work through all of our own hurts and betrayals.

The morning after I revealed to my husband how much we were in debt I felt like I was standing on that auction block, undeserving of his grace and forgiveness. I had been loyal to the world and disloyal to the one who had chosen me in love and honor. It was through the gracious love and forgiveness of God that Bruce was able to reinvest in our marriage and begin trusting me again. What does that love look like that enables us to love when trust has been dashed...to give grace when it is undeserved...to invite someone who has wounded us back into our lives? It looks like a Son hanging on a cross in our place. It looks like a Father, who for a fleeting moment, was forced to look away at the atrocious injustices being done to His child. It looks like a Savior who paid the ransom for all of us when we deserve to stand on that auction block ourselves.

What is our part in return?

“And He said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment’” Matthew 24:37-38.