“God’s grace works, not simply by helping us to forget, but by restoring hope and healing our deep wounds.”
Thoughts from daily Bible reading for today – November 3, 2022
Yet the time will come when Israel’s people will be like the sands of the seashore—too many to count! Then, at the place where they were told, ‘You are not my people,’ it will be said, ‘You are children of the living God.’ Hosea 1:10, NLT
Each of us has a “home base,” a place to which we return from our comings and goings. It is where we can let our guard down and truly rest and relax, recovering from the weariness of daily life. And for many of us, this place we call home is a shared place, one in which we live daily life in close proximity with a spouse, children, or roommates. These are the people with whom we must daily learn what it means to love and serve others in Christ’s name. And though this shared sense of home brings with it incredible joys and wonders, it is also a daily testing ground of the genuineness of our faith.
Home, in this way, is thus a complicated reality. It offers to each of us the greatest experience of God’s grace and love, yet is also the place in which we most need to seek out forgiveness for the countless ways that we fail to love others as we should. To live together as a family, whatever “family” may look like for you, requires an ability to stay connected to one another in meaningful ways, transforming places of pain into those of grace, mercy, and love.
Physical places carry our memories. Were you to enter your childhood home, you would be flooded with emotion, both good and bad. Memories of baking in the kitchen with your mother or playing games in the living room floor with your father or siblings. Yet those same rooms may also carry the deep pain of moments of heartbreak, broken trust, and words exchanged in great rage that left a profound mark upon your heart. And in truth, we don’t have to go all the way back to childhood to encounter these emotions. Wherever you live, right now, you can likely associate times of great joy and unspeakable pain with the place you call home.
Our temptation is to celebrate the moments of joy and bury and ignore the pain, willing it to go away by driving it deeper and deeper into the recesses of our memories. Yet what if God’s grace works, not simply by helping us to forget, but by restoring hope and healing our deep wounds?
This was the very promise God made to his people through Hosea. When their own sin and rebellion led to the declaration “you are not my people,” God promised at that very place to instead write a new chapter to their story, “you are children of the living God.” Difficult as it surely is, think today of the places you’ve called home and the pain you’ve suffered or inflicted in those spaces. Think as well of the place you call home today, and the people with whom you share that home. God is reminding you today that in these very places and with these very people he longs to write a new chapter in your story, too.
“Not one word of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass.” Joshua 21:45, ESV
Prayer
Father, remind me afresh today that no part of my story is wasted, and nothing in my life is beyond your healing touch and ability to transform for good, I pray through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Application
With Hosea as your guide, reflect today on the places in your life that have been the source of your greatest pain, and ask the Lord to meet you in that place and speak life where there was once death and hope where there was once despair.
Related Reading
Deuteronomy 32:4; Lamentations 3:23-24; Romans 8:28
Worship Resource
New Life Worship: Abide
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