So, in case you may not have realized yet, God is pretty much crazy.
That's not a flippant comment about the Lord of...well, everything.
God does, and asks His people to do, things that are crazy.
Let's talk about Hosea... Hosea's whole life is just God saying, you are one giant sermon illustration. (Isn't that what we all want from our lives...) Marry a prostitute, that way people will see that your God cares for you even when you are whoring yourselves out to this world.
Name your kids; Jezereel, because the Jehu family is going to be destroyed. Lo-Ruhamah, because I'm done, I have no more mercy, no more love for this people. Lo-Ammi, because they are no longer my people.
Great...
Then Paul comes along and sees Jesus, in everything. Why was Hosea told to do these crazy things? Because Jesus was going to show love and mercy to the unloved. Because Jesus was coming to make it possible that those who weren't a people might become the people of God.
Paul says, that God acted through the person of Jesus to completely redefine what it meant to be the people of God. Now everyone is welcomed into a new kingdom, one where we can all be called the people of God.
Great!
But the medium is the message, and the medium that God chooses to give us this gift is crazy... Welcome to the cross. Welcome to foolishness. Welcome to a world that no longer makes sense. Welcome to childhood.
Remember when you were a kid and everything made sense. But at the same time, nothing made sense.
All the time we were asking the question, why?
We asked because it seemed our parents were completely insane. They were always telling us to do or not do things that seemed strange to us. So we asked, and the best reason they could come up with, the trump card for why, was, "because I said so." Maybe its just me, but that doesn't actually make sense.
I want better reasons than that for why I do things. I want to know what I'm getting into with what I'm doing or not doing. I want knowledge.
The thing about God interacting with humanity is that its insane. Totally crazy. God might actually laugh at our attempts to gain a knowledge of his reasoning. Think about Hosea, if God said, all these things are to set up a situation in which I will come as a human, die on a cross, resurrect and through that means I will redeem all of creation.
Great?
It doesn't make sense, it's crazy. Isn't there a better way? Couldn't you make this simpler God?
If we are going to be children of God, we might need to embrace what feels totally crazy. The things that don't make any sense to us will often be what we do, simply because we know God said so.
God probably isn't telling all of us to marry prostitutes. But if He did, would you? He's probably not telling us to name our children in a way that will indict the country we live in. But if He did, would you? For Jesus the core tenant of being a child of God was to take up a cross and follow and He did charge us to do the same...will we?
God might be saying to all of us, you are going to be one giant sermon illustration.
Remember when you were a kid and everything made sense. But at the same time, nothing made sense.
All the time we were asking the question, why?
We asked because it seemed our parents were completely insane. They were always telling us to do or not do things that seemed strange to us. So we asked, and the best reason they could come up with, the trump card for why, was, "because I said so." Maybe its just me, but that doesn't actually make sense.
I want better reasons than that for why I do things. I want to know what I'm getting into with what I'm doing or not doing. I want knowledge.
The thing about God interacting with humanity is that its insane. Totally crazy. God might actually laugh at our attempts to gain a knowledge of his reasoning. Think about Hosea, if God said, all these things are to set up a situation in which I will come as a human, die on a cross, resurrect and through that means I will redeem all of creation.
Great?
It doesn't make sense, it's crazy. Isn't there a better way? Couldn't you make this simpler God?
If we are going to be children of God, we might need to embrace what feels totally crazy. The things that don't make any sense to us will often be what we do, simply because we know God said so.
God probably isn't telling all of us to marry prostitutes. But if He did, would you? He's probably not telling us to name our children in a way that will indict the country we live in. But if He did, would you? For Jesus the core tenant of being a child of God was to take up a cross and follow and He did charge us to do the same...will we?
God might be saying to all of us, you are going to be one giant sermon illustration.
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