The Heart of God [and Dogs]

This blog is designed to give people an inner look at a devotional life. Taking time each day to spend time with the Lord. The hope is if you travel on this journey with Rev. Jacob Shaw, you may be more inclined to spend time with the Lord as well. I encourage the use of a devotional, a scripture reading and prayer, then finally some form of artistic mark to tie it all together. 

Today's devotional is taken from: Zacharias, Ravi. The Logic of God: 52 Christian Essentials for the Heart and Mind. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2019. [E-Book] Chapter 14: The Heart of God

Opening Thought: Today’s reading is a very profound and reflective piece. He pulls from the Book of Hosea in the Bible and tell us the story of Hosea, a prophet called by God. Now prophets were challenge by God in their service, but Hosea has a unique life circumstance that really cries a truth like no other. Hosea is married to Gomer, a woman who continually breaks their vows of marriage to continue a life of prostitution. When people hear of this, they of course ask Hosea, how he can continue to love a woman who is not only sinful, but continually break her vows to him? Hosea’s answer is astonishing, “I will be delighted to answer your question if you will first answer a question of mine. How can a holy God like this love such a harlotrous people like us?”  

The devotional begins with: Hosea 1:10

“The Israelites will be like the sand of the seashore, which cannot be measured or counted. In the place where it was said to them. ‘You are not my people,’ they will be called ‘children of the living God.’

Second Thought:

Zacharias also depicts God as a hound that loving chases a person. He uses a poem from Francis Thompson to articulate the point. The idea is that God chases after us to offer us his love, but we seem to instinctively run from God. The beauty is that God is a hound that will never stop chasing. When we consider the plot between Hosea and Gomer, Hosea continually loves Gomer, despite her fleeing nature. Now, I do not know how many people could withstand that situation, nor do I think God necessarily calls us to stay in a marriage with someone who is so relentlessly unfaithful. (Though I do think often people abandon their marriages too quickly due to infidelity, if one strays, that does not mean there is no hope. If both parties can seek professional support and counselling and they can move well towards forgiveness and reconciliation with each other.) Hosea’s situations remind us that our nature as human holds a leaning toward promiscuity-of-faith; we tend to want to abandon the steadfast love of God for the quick fixes in the material world. We as the many people in faith need to be aware of this, the more aware of this we are the more we will remember that Christ is continually seeking us, so no matter how far we run, Christ will always meet us to bring us back home. Also, in remembering that we all have a little Gomer in us, that means we can be mindful of our feelings and desires, by doing so we can redirect ourselves back to God. If we do fall to sin, or if you know of someone in that position, then remind them when Jesus caught the woman in adultery, he did not condone her actions, but he did not persecute her either. Rather, he gave her the chance to move to a life free of sin. It is this balance of recognition of our sinful capacity, and a willingness to let God’s love reach us, that we can be born anew and find the strength in Christ to resist the things that drive us from God.

Continual Work: Stop running! Let God reach you. There are the old “sinner’s prayers” which basically follow a format of recognizing your sinful nature and welcoming God into your heart. That prayer, in essence, is a dedicated moment of stillness. Not every Christian denomination has a sinner’s prayer as a part of their formation, but regardless of how you formulate it, we all need to take the time to let God catch us.

What Rev. Jacob is Working On: My dog is relentless, if I am working from home, he sleeps on my lap when I work, sometimes I must put my laptop on him, he does not mind, he just loves being close to me. In the evening after our walk outside, we come in and he plays with me and my family. When we are all tired and my wife and I settle down for television, he curls up with us and snuggles, until it is time for bed. At night he curls up by my legs until the next day. Even though we do this every day he never tires.  As much as God is like a loving dog chasing us, we too could learn a thing or two from our loving companions. I want to feel for God as my dog feels for me. That being in the presence of God is the defining feature of happiness and contentment in my life.  

Rev. Jacob’s Scripture time: Proverbs 26:11

“As a dog returneth to his vomit, [so] a fool returneth to his folly,”

Using a metaphor like a “dog’s relentless” to articular the love God can have for us, and a love we should strive to have for God is one thing, but we cannot assume that all elements of dogs will parallel to God or make a good reference point for us to follow either.       

Closing Words: I hope you enjoyed and were lifted by this devotional time; it is enormously important to take time for God each day. By doing so, you welcome God into your life, and in turn you will be able to better see the world through the eyes of God, rather than God through the world's eyes.

Prayer for your day: Come for us Lord, Your spirit for persistence is the mercy which saves us. Open our eye so we may see Your approach not as a beast ferocious with teeth, but a dedicate hound coming to help lick our wounds. If we can pause and stop to think about Your love, I know we will come to know your magnificence. In Christ’s name, Amen.  

Artistic Close: My Dog – and yes, he is loyal but also eats his own vomit…