Hosea 11:1-11
11:1 When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.
2 The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols.
3 Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them.
4 I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them.
5 They shall return to the land of Egypt, and Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me.
6 The sword rages in their cities, it consumes their oracle-priests, and devours because of their schemes.
7 My people are bent on turning away from me. To the Most High they call, but he does not raise them up at all.
8 How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender.
9 I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.
10 They shall go after the LORD, who roars like a lion; when he roars, his children shall come trembling from the west.
11 They shall come trembling like birds from Egypt, and like doves from the land of Assyria; and I will return them to their homes, says the LORD.
Last week I had to work at my meditation, poking and prodding rather unenthusiastically. This week the text from Hosea leaped off the screen at me. I barely made it passed the end of the first verse before my eyes had filled with tears that welled up from a heart overflowing with love, joy, acceptance, and a complicated tangle of emotions I gently let be.
Last week I commented to my priest that I did not understand her love for Hosea. She preached exactly that and I found myself warming to the book, and understanding her fondness for it. Eternal love, endless forgiveness, a God who will always take us back. But my hackles still rose in annoyance at the treatment of women, so biblically stereotypical. Woman the wanton, woman the whore, and the long suffering husband. (When in my experience it is so often the other way around.) Here it was again, God male-male good; woman not God-woman not good. I was left with very mixed feelings about Hosea.
Then I read the above. Oh yes, the word "he" is used to describe God but it sounds out of place and awkward, it is out of tune among the symphony of words. The imagery here is overwhelmingly female. God is Mother in no uncertain terms. God who lifts her child in her arms. God who stands silhouetted in the bright light of the open door calling her children home. God who holds tight to the tiny fists of her children as they take their first bobbling steps, who dries their tears and kisses away the "owwies."
God whose love is so strong, so tender, so heartbreakingly real that she presses her cheek against ours, closes her eyes, and wraps us in her arms, smiling at the wonder of what she has created. God who will always forgive, always call us home, always stand in the open doorway. This is the shape of the God in whose image we were made. The tiny fragment of infinity that is Mother/Sister.
I have often chafed at the maleness of God in the bible. My intellect tells me that the bible was written by men, it was of course their stories and their understandings that made it onto paper. Knowing that doesn't mean my soul doesn't occasionally long for its own image and shape in the words. But every now and then a glimpse, a flash, of another side of the story peeks through. Perhaps veiled, covered in the dust of millennium and nearly lost, but there. A female face of God, a tiny clandestine gift from our ancient sisters. Perhaps whispered into the ear of a child by his mother, told over and over until he had made it his own and no longer remembered it as a woman's tale.
I read this piece and in my mind the image rose of a friend, cheek pressed gently against the forehead of the toddler in her arms. He sat in her lap, wrapped in love. Both their faces were wreathed in smiles. A young untarnished soul, and one heavy with many burdens, at peace together for a moment in that timeless embrace of a woman and a child. What better balm for my soul then to watch the eyes of both fill with peace? And now to read and know that God holds us just so, if we will only let her.
What greater comfort, what more perfect happiness? Hosea 11:1-11. This one I will treasure in my heart, and ponder it in the silence of my soul.
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