This is an utterly ridiculous blog entry, I'll forewarn you. I am absolutely exhausted. I was foolish and I drank a cup of chocolate chai tea last night and when it was time to go to sleep, my body would not rest. I laid awake as the power went off at around midnight, and then could not sleep for fear Jake might wake up cold in our uninsulated upstairs. Don't worry, we have found heat and shelter at the in-laws house. However, as a result of this electricityless existence came a lot of free time, and I picked up a fiction book loaned to me by Sonja, a book I have had for more than six months and I was near determined not to read it because I do not like getting caught up in fiction books. I like to learn, and I never learn anything from fiction, I just get dreamy and contemplative, and I don't necessarily enjoy that side of me. In either case, tired and stressed, I didn't want to learn anything, I wanted to enjoy a book. So, I picked up Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers. I never doubted Sonja's taste, but I didn't know that I would enjoy it as much as she promised I would and I absolutely did, and highly reccomend it to anyone. It is a wonderful love story that for me, touched my heart. The plotline is a rewriting of the book of Hosea, where God tells a prophet to marry and love a prostitute, who runs off and has children with other men, and yet, God has Hosea continually be faithful to her. The book is a retelling and therefore the storyline is much more in depth than what the Bible tells, but it really was beautiful. This poor girl was sold into prostitution as an eight year old, raped by men, beaten, her wages witheld from her, and slowly she becomes a shell of a woman. She does not believe in love. When Hosea meets her, God speaks to him instantly and he knows she is supposed to be his bride. I was quite irritated at the character development because Hosea is the ultimate husband. Ok, and ultimately his faithfulness and love is supposed to be parallel to God, although his human-ness does come through at times (not nearly enough, in my opinion, which is why I try to stay away from romance novels- those men don't exist!).
Anyway, I guess that's the point. The author is such an intelligent writer and she has a way of making you look back into yourself, and also to the Lord. If you've read Hosea you know that although he loves his wife, and he is so good to her, she runs away. The same happens in Redeeming Love, she can't enjoy love because she's only seen it break people down, and of course, she was so hurt by people who were supposed to love her. I cannot at all, in any way, relate to what the main character experienced, although a small fraction of her hurt I well remember. I just spent the last 30 minutes on facebook going through different facebook pages of really nice guys. Ok, I don't think I've ever met a "Michael Hosea" before my husband, but my past is full of really nice men that I wanted to be with so badly, and I just couldn't break away from the broken life that I had been accustomed to, that I thought I deserved. I just wish someone would have tried to save me, I wish it wouldn't have gone so far. No man could have saved me, it had to come down to surrender to the Lord, I just wish someone would have heard my cry and directed me to Him. Would I have even listened? I don't even know.
I have to believe that I met Paul in the right timing, afterall, if I would have met him any earlier I would not have the little "world changer" Jake on my hands. He is worth all of the pain. I just think about how the salvation of Sarah (the main character) came about, and it was 100% relient on Hosea obeying God's call. So often I read romance novels and I hate that I can't be married to the main macho man of the story (and I don't watch romantic movies....I watched Becky's movie Bed of Roses and was in total sap mode for a week!). Anyway, reading about Hosea in the book made me very grateful for Paul, grateful that a man finally looked passed by faults and loved me otherwise, loved me more because of them. I'm feeling a little silly that my last blog was also about Paul, and this blog isn't entirely about him but instead about a man who obeyed God's call to marry a broken woman, and I am so grateful. Alistair Begg (Paul's favorite famous pastor) has a sermon where he fusses at all of the single men for not going after single moms as spouses. We think we deserve more, that God didn't raise us up for something that might make our lives more difficult, and that God's call won't hurt at all. In the book, Sarah really struggles with not being able to give Hosea a 'clean version' of herself, and I can just totally relate. I think it is so touching that's God's heart in the book was to give Sarah, a woman who had been intimate with hundreds and hundreds of men, to a man who had waited his entire life for just one woman. It just broke my heart, in a good way because that is God's heart. It is so beautiful.
Ok, that was totally off subject. My entire point of this is that I believe God is ushering in a generation of people that are going to love so much, so selflessly, it is going to break down barriers. If we can learn to love without judgement, learn to obey without question, and serve without self, we can change the world. I am just so excited to incorporate this into my own life, and see this manifested in others, and see people healed and set free. I called this blog "bound up hate," because it's the opposite of the book title and the state we will all abide in without God's "redeeming love." I think I am in the mood for some worship music now.
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