Contemplative Bible Reading

Hosea 4:1-3 (New Living Translation)

1 Hear the word of the Lord, O people of Israel!
The Lord has brought charges against you, saying:
“There is no faithfulness, no kindness,
no knowledge of God in your land.
2 You make vows and break them;
you kill and steal and commit adultery.
There is violence everywhere—
one murder after another.
3 That is why your land is in mourning,
and everyone is wasting away.
Even the wild animals, the birds of the sky,
and the fish of the sea are disappearing.

Verse 3, the land mourns, everyone wastes, even the animals, birds, and fish disappear. Why this environmental disaster?

The people have disobeyed God.

Wait, not a good answer. Surely there is more here, more science, more technology, more abuse of these inventions.

Well, let’s read.

Lying is in there. That’s right. The politicians, the business people, those rich folks are lying to us about what they are doing. They are hiding the damage they do.

And those powerful people kill and steal. That’s right! They do those things and the rest of us suffer.

Wait, how did this “commit adultery” get in the list? What we do in the bedroom doesn’t affect the environment, does it? And how did that “no knowledge of God” get in there as well? I mean, what, read the Bible and the environment will be fine?

There is much here that doesn’t make sense. There is much here that we don’t want to read. We need some editing. We need God to listen to us instead of us listening to God, right?

Sorry. God is God; I am not. That is a good thing—for all of us and the environment as well.

Proverbs 11:24-25 (New Living Translation)

24 Give freely and become more wealthy;
be stingy and lose everything.

25 The generous will prosper;
those who refresh others will themselves be refreshed.

We live in the sharing economy. Wikipedia is the world’s source of all knowledge. It costs nothing. It was and is being written by volunteers who write it for the love of sharing knowledge. Isn’t this new idea wonderful?

Well, maybe the sharing economy isn’t such a new idea. Hence, these Proverbs. The writer shows the difference between freely giving what God has given and holding it tightly in my clenched fist.

Giving blesses the receiver. Giving blesses the giver. God blesses the giver, receiver, and the gift.

This isn’t new. This isn’t complicated. All I have to do is ease the muscles that clench my fist. Why is easing so difficult?

Habakkuk 2:15 (New Living Translation)

What sorrow awaits you who make your neighbors drunk!
You force your cup on them
so you can gloat over their shameful nakedness.

“Let’s get them drunk so they will embarrass themselves, and then we will have a good time!” So says the prophet speaking the words of God to His people.

Sound familiar? Where have we heard that before? Oh yeah, in high school, and just about everyday and everywhere since. Give them something intoxicating, something that causes them to lose sight of good sense and…

Me? Oh, there is no such thing that will go to my head and cause me to uh, er, well maybe there are a few things, but, you know, well, …

No. This is the same for all of us, and especially me. Pump me with the wrong right stuff and I lose sense of all that is the right focus of my senses, and the result is the last part of the above verse.

Please God, help me in my unbelief. Help me to avoid the tempatations of intoxication and intoxicating others.

Proverbs 11:19 (New Living Translation)

Godly people find life;
evil people find death.

Life and death. In the final reckoning, what else is there? This chapter runs through a number of ways to say this, but this is the summary. Do what God wants us to do, and good will come back to us. Ignore God’s advice, and after a while, suffering comes.

Note that there is no promise of an easy life. (“Easy” is subjective, and since I am the subject, I decide what that is. Silly me.) Simply life. Simply the greatest blessing the God gives.

What do I want? Am I humble enough to follow God’s advice instead of finding my own clever shortcuts through some desire to “make my own mistakes?”

My own life is pretty good. I won’t burn words listing my blessings. I can puff up and say that it is my just reward for following God, but that would be merely silly puffing. God blesses in ways that God sees fit, and God knows what fits each one of us.

Attempt to be Godly each moment. Enough written. Now let’s pray for such.

Hosea 8:4 (New Living Translation)

The people have appointed kings without my consent,
and princes without my approval.

This is the prophet relaying God’s words to His people. Consider that one for a moment. “Thus says the Lord…” What a blessing to have. The people, however, had their own ideas on who should be King and what a King should do.

Poor people. Why did they ignore God? Poor us today. Why do we ignore God? Why do we interpret God’s heart in light of our own desires? I suppose this is part of the fallen nature of mankind. Nothing seems to change.

And let us thank God that nothing seems to change as that carries with it that…God doesn’t change. In spite of all our failings, God remains steadfast in his love towards us.

These are old ideas and old words (thus and steadfast). Perhaps we should repeat the words of verse 2 of this chapter:

‘Help us, for you are our God!’

Proverbs 6:16-19 (New Living Translation)

16 There are six things the Lord hates—
no, seven things he detests:
17 haughty eyes,
a lying tongue,
hands that kill the innocent,
18 a heart that plots evil,
feet that race to do wrong,
19 a false witness who pours out lies,
a person who sows discord in a family.

Two things in this list that the Lord hates: hands that kill the innocent (murder) and sowing discord in a family.

How did these two appear in the same list? Once again, there must be a mistake in translation or something, right? Probably not. One thing in the list is illegal: murder. Another thing (lying) is illegal in some situations.

The rest are just plain bad in the eyes of God. How do I see them? Yikes. Let’s move on to another question before I find myself woefully wanting in yet another instance.

Isaiah 66:2 (New Living Translation)

“I will bless those who have humble and contrite hearts,
who tremble at my word.

The Lord God Creator blesses those who step back and do not impose their power on others. God blesses those who are saddened when they realize that they have committed wrong. God blesses the simple readers and listeners who tremble at His Word.

Where is the gold medal for the biggest, fastest, and strongest? Hmm, odd. This doesn’t sound quite right.

This, however, is what God tells us. Let us listen and heed. Our ways often disagree with God’s. Let us accept God as Lord. Please God, help me in my unbelief.

Hosea 8:7 (King James Version)

For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind:

I use the King James Version of this verse as it is an old, well-used (at least in old times it was well-used) verse and saying.

The prophet Hosea is speaking God’s words to His people. Day by day, little by little, the people had moved away from God and what God wanted. Nothing major, just something here and something there.

They planted a breeze. Uh oh, here comes a tornado.

Unimaginable force and destruction. All because of a little sin here and there and over there as well.

I am better than that. I know better and I would never… Silly me. I am no better. I do no better.

Thank you God for your grace and forgiveness. The tornado is not coming for the house trailer of my being. God’s grace is a barrier from that. Thank you God. How many times can I write that?

Proverbs 6:16-19 (New Living Translation)

16 There are six things the Lord hates—
no, seven things he detests:
17 haughty eyes,
a lying tongue,
hands that kill the innocent,
18 a heart that plots evil,
feet that race to do wrong,
19 a false witness who pours out lies,
a person who sows discord in a family.

This is one of the lists that we find here and there in the Bible. Things the Lord God hates.

One of the troubling things about this list to me is that I—all of us—see these things every day. I see them, I shrug, and I know that the Lord God hates them. I am sort of, oh well, what’s new, who cares?

Well, God cares. And so should I. It is time I stop accepting these as parts of life and that’s “just the way it is.” It doesn’t have to be this way, and there are some things I can do.

1 Chronicles 12:16-17 (English Standard Version)

16 And some of the men of Benjamin and Judah came to the stronghold to David. 17 David went out to meet them and said to them, “If you have come to me in friendship to help me, my heart will be joined to you; but if to betray me to my adversaries, although there is no wrong in my hands, then may the God of our fathers see and rebuke you.”

King David is addressing a group of persons who had come to him in a time of trouble. There are two things that stick with me in David’s response.

First, “If.” David isn’t judging or concluding on the intentions of these persons. He is letting them decide on that. And David knows that God knows their intentions.

Second, it is all about God. If they have bad intentions, God will take care of them. David does not give himself to power to punish.

In this occasion, David put God first. David acknowledged the power of God to judge and mete. There were other occasions when David didn’t do so well.

Let us all note that success comes from allowing God to be God and me to be much less than God.