The Seventh Sunday of Pentecost

It is an old story and yet a very contemporary one.  We often doubt God’s providential care, we fail to trust God with our lives, believing we can secure our own future.  We often fail to nurture the most essential and important relationship we have and the failure to trust God with our lives and to nurture the most important relationship we have leads to bondage and death.  As Israel would discover over and over, when we neglect or take for granted our relationship with God, things don’t go well, life becomes off balance, and the hardships and struggles that life surely brings our way become all the more difficult to navigate.  The prophet Hosea knew this and called Israel to give themselves wholeheartedly to God.  To a people who had turned to idols and toxic politics for their survival and security, Hosea speaks the words of a broken-hearted God who loves his people and longs to be in relationship in spite of and perhaps even because of their infidelity.