Accepting God’s proposal to marry him
Hosea 2:16, 17C-18, 21-22
Thus says the LORD: I will allure her; I will lead her into
the desert and speak to her heart. She shall respond there as in the days of
her youth, when she came up from the land of Egypt. On that day, says the LORD, She shall call me “My husband,”
and never again “My baal.” I will espouse you to me forever: I will espouse you in
right and in justice, in love and in mercy; I will espouse you in fidelity, and
you shall know the LORD.
Children
have funny ways of talking. I heard this
on the playground once. One boy was
talking about how he really loved his football signed by Brett Favre, and his
friends began to tease him, saying, “Well, if you love it so much, why don’t
you just marry it?!” If a child said she
really loved her dog or cat, their friends would taunt them: “If you love it so
much, why don’t you marry it!?” But
children aren’t the only ones who use this analogy, so do adults. Don’t we hear people say things like: “He’s
married to his job; he wears his pager to bed!”
Some people are more married to their job than to their spouse! This is how I look at being a priest. When some people complain: “It’s too bad
priests can’t get married,” I say, “Priests do get married: we marry the church.” That’s why I love to go over to your homes
for supper – to see what my wife cooked for dinner! When you want to express intense love and
deep devotion, you use the analogy of marriage to describe that relationship.
We find
one of the most perplexing predictions of the Old Testament in today’s first
reading from Hosea, where God says he will marry his people. Listen to these words of love. God says, “I will espouse you to me forever;
I will espouse you in right and justice, in love and mercy; I will espouse you
in fidelity, and you shall know the Lord.”
Wow, God just got down on one knee and proposed to you! The old saying goes, “Man proposes, but God
disposes.” But Hosea flips that on its
head. The truer maxim is: “God proposes
and man disposes.” God proposes marriage
to us. The children may taunt God
saying, “Well, if you love your people so much, why don’t you just go ahead and
marry them!?” Today, God replies, “What
a great idea! I think I will!”
Anyone
who’s been really married for more than a year, however, knows that marriage is
not as easy as falling in love with your favorite Brett Farve football. True marriage is demanding and requires the
effort of both parties for it to work.
In other words, it’s not enough to say, “God wants to marry you!” You must seriously and soberly ask yourself,
“Do I want to marry God?” There must be
reciprocity, mutual love and support, or the marriage will end in disastrous
divorce, even our marriage to God. Look
at it this way, if children saw how you live, how you express your love for
God, would they taunt you by saying, “If you love God so much, why don’t you
just marry him?!” Martin Luther King,
Jr. often asked rhetorically: “If you were on trial for being a Christian, for
your love of God, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” You see, in the end, God proposes and man
disposes.
Praised be
Jesus Christ!
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