Hosea 11: 1-11 (links validated 7/6/22)

It reminds me of the scene near the end of the movie Sleepless in Seattle. Eight-year-old Jonah is determined to help his widower father, Sam, meet Annie, the woman he is sure is the right one for his dad. So he manages to get himself from Seattle to the top of the Empire State Building in New York where Annie might be on Valentine’s Day. Sam becomes instantly frantic when he learns what has happened and dashes by plane across country, finally locating Jonah on the Observation Deck. When they meet, Sam is beside himself with joy and yet is consternated and can still feel the anger and the fear at this terrifying stunt his son had pulled. He is as we say today “a hot mess.” As he embraces Jonah, he nearly begins to weep. Again, most parents know this combination of feelings...

Timothy Paul Jones, co-author of the book, Proof: Finding Freedom through the Intoxicating Joy of Irresistible Grace tells the story of taking his adopted daughter to Disney World. By the time Jones and his family had adopted the little girl, she was eight years old. Her former family had been to Disney before but had never taken her. She’d always had to stay with a family friend. Timothy and his wife announced to the whole family that they were going to Disney. What happened next startled them. Their adopted daughter began to act out. Jones relates how he was thankful he didn’t resort to the threat, “If you don’t start behaving, you won’t go.” He simply asked her if this trip was something they were doing as a family. When he asked, she nodded. He then said, “you’re going.” According to Jones, her behavior did not improve until the night of the first day at Disney in the hotel. That night his little girl said to him, ““Daddy, I finally got to go to Disney World. But it wasn’t because I was good; it’s because I’m yours.”

There’s a poem by Meg Jeffers called “Ordnance” that says life today is like a bomb in each one of our gardens. It is like Jesus warning us here that we never know just how and when and for what our souls are required of us. We would like to think that we can build up sufficient wealth and well-being, property and possession in this world. We would like to buy safety and security from the world -- so that our souls can just play and make merry each day. But there is a bomb in our garden, and it is not going away of its own volition. The poem says, There is a bomb in my garden. I know I should call someone but imagine the hubbub: men in mackintoshes leaving boot prints in the peas, their heels pasted with scraps of tender lettuce, and I would be shunted off, barred from my home while other muck about in what is mine. No, I think I will let it be. Clean the exposed parts; buff it up, perhaps. Build a gazebo; plant roses. Listen to it tick. Listen to it tick. That’s Jesus and this story applied to each one of our souls and to the soul of the world. Listen to it tick!...

("There was a woman who wanted peace in the world and peace in her heart and all sorts of good things, but she was very frustrated. The world seemed to be falling apart. She would read the papers and get depressed. One day she decided to go shopping, and she went into a mall and picked a store at random. She walked in and was surprised to see Jesus behind the counter...")

("In recent years a number of books have been published that attempt to do something that probably no one would have dared to try a couple of generations ago: namely, write biographies about God. Several of these, including Jack Miles' book, God: A Biography, treat God as a literary character who develops, grows, matures, and changes over time...")

I was born in 1957, and Coronation Street began airing in the UK back in 1961. We moved around a lot when I was growing up. Over the years the various characters have been my companions wherever I have lived. People have come and gone in my life but the characters of Coronation Street have remained constant. One of the enduring qualities of Coronation Street has always been the believability of the characters on the street. Unlike American soap operas whose characters are drawn from the rich and beautiful, Corrie’s characters come in all shapes and sizes and are real, down to earth characters that most of us can recognize from our daily lives.

I will never forget the funeral of little Jack. At the age of 9 he was killed in a car crash. His parents were bereft, so were his grandparents, so was his school, so was his church, and so was I. As I prayed for something to say at his funeral, God brought to my mind the words of Romans 8, those lovely words about God’s love that conquers all. But the words that seized my attention were the opening words of verse 31, “What then shall we say….” What do we say in the face of such a tragedy? We ask, Why, God, why? What is the answer to that agonized question flung for millenia into the face of God? What then should I say at the funeral of a 9 year old, with his parents and classmates and church members and me sobbing in confused grief? I said, “We do not know the mind of God. But we do know his heart. We’ve seen his heart in the life and death of Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son.” And we have heard it today in God’s brokenhearted soliloquy in Hosea 11.

The baby is walking! The first steps of any child are both amazing and precious. There are a number of starts and stops, timid beginnings, interrupted progress. Then, finally, a child lets go of what has steadied them - often the hand of an adult - and careens into the big, wide world. But adults who have loaned hands and fingers to steady a child never really let go. They remember how it was for the child to depend on them. God knows how that feels: It was I who taught Ephraim to walk. In Picasso's painting here, the mother stands behind the child, holding the child's hands and allowing the child the full view of the world out front. The child is staring with wide-open eyes at the world, while the mother has eyes only for the child. Dressed in light-colored clothing, the child visually advances in the painting while the mother, dressed in neutrals that are much the same value as the background, recedes. This child, created in the context of World War II (1943), is setting out into an uncertain world...

Scroll down the page for this video.

Scroll down the page for this video.