Friday, April 27, 2012

Share the Love...or don't..




I love this song. Take a few minutes and listen to it, the beautiful arrangement, the haunting vocals, and most importantly the lyrics.

This is a beautiful, heartbreaking story about a Lover (God) and his Beloved (Israel). The Lover saves this infant, raises her up to be a beautiful woman and adorns her with jewels and riches; and in return, the Beloved...


Cheats on him...

and not just once, like time after time after time, with anyone and everyone she can lay hold of.

If you read Ezekiel 16, where this song is taken from; you'll see that she also takes his children that she bore to him, and murders them; actually sacrifices them in the fire. Not exactly a Proverbs 31 woman.

Read on and God says that She (Israel) is the most vile and wicked one of all, more so than her sisters Sodom and Syria.

Wait..Sodom? like the city that God destroyed with fire? That Sodom??

Yes, and here God is saying Israel is worse than her. Not something to be proud of.

Now, this would be very depressing if it ended here; but if you have ever read the OT than you know that there is always hope for Israel, and God always returns to his promise he made with her.

At the end of Ezekiel 16 God tells us that he will restore Israel to her former glory-after she is humiliated and publicly shamed- but NOT before her sisters are restored. Yes, God is going to restore Sodom, at least that's what he says in Ezekiel. If you choose to believe it or not is up to you.

This is what fascinates me about God. His chosen people ended up being the worst of the worst; they made Sodom and Gamorrah look like Mother Teresa; but to even think that God didn't know this would happen, to think that this wasn't (and isn't) His plan is to deny that He is God.

So when we think someone is beyond saving (and admit it, you've most likely said that about Howard Stern or Bill Mahr) we need to remember that if God is willing to redeem Israel, he can assuredly redeem the worst of us. No one is out of God's reach and no one can escape God's love.

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