wil-der-ness (wil'der nis) n. any barren, empty, or open area

A few years ago, my cousin Katie shared one of her favorite verses with me.  When I say share, I do not mean show.  I mean she let me borrow it, to take what was a special word between her and God and claim it for myself for a season.  In the book of Hosea, God tells his prophet to speak to the Israelites of their impending destruction.  Because the Israelites have made idols from the very gifts that the Lord gave them, God decides to take their blessings away.  But he does not leave them destitute.  After stripping them of everything that has stolen their attention and affections, God invites them into relationship with him.

Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her.

(Hosea 2:14, NIV)

I have learned that any time you see the word "therefore," you need to see what it's there for (sorry for the blatant dad joke...the first of many, I'm sure).  So why is God wooing these people?  In the previous verse, God says Israel "went after her lovers, but me she forgot."  So many things speak to me in this passage, the most powerful being the fact that God refers to himself as me.  This scripture could have been recorded a thousand different and less personal ways, but God really makes himself vulnerable here.  I hurt because you chose someone else.  How many times have we felt that?  And how many times have we responded with the amount of grace and forgiveness that God offers?  God's consequence in this situation is a testimony to the type of love that he is.  He is not a selfish love that hopes that we will one day see the error of our ways and be forever remorseful for the one that got away.  He is not an insecure love that needs our affections to validate his worth.  He is not a controlling love that forces us to worship him.  He is a gentle love that pursues us, allures us, brings us to places of solitude and poverty so that we can hear his voice.

Although this verse has been a great comfort to me, it had gone untouched in my memory for quite some time until another verse in Leviticus tapped its shoulder and woke it up.  I have to admit, I was surprised that Leviticus could wake anything up seeing as how it has served as a great tool for putting me to sleep, but I suppose when you pray for God to bring to life the dullest book of the Bible, he comes through for you!  Leviticus 1 through 7 outlines the instructions for offerings made to the Lord at the Tabernacle.  The last verse of chapter 7 states, "The Lord gave these instructions to Moses on Mount Sinai when he commanded the Israelites to bring their offerings to the Lord in the wilderness of Sinai" (Leviticus 7:38, NLT).  When I read this, I thought to myself, what could the Israelites possibly have to offer in the wilderness?  Isn't ten percent of nothing...nothing?  I thought of the times when God has led me into the wilderness or the desert.  In those times, I had nothing to offer.  No money.  No wisdom.  No talents.  No hope.  And suddenly I realized that that is exactly what God wants from us.  He wants us to give him our nothingness so that he can give us his fullness.  He wants us to trust him with our poverty and our foolishness and our ineptitude and our hopelessness.  If we can willingly give our emptiness to him and trust that he will fill, then we can finally stop chasing our deceitful lovers and start chasing the one true God.

And now, time for a less profound confession.  Every time I see the word wilderness, I get a little Madonna song stuck in my head.  I'll let you figure out which one!