We don’t appreciate what we have until it’s gone

by Helen Redfern · December 7, 2016

Yesterday we saw the nation of Israel described as an unfaithful wife, living it up with the surrounding nations, depending on them to provide for her and compromising her own morality in the process. This was the problem –

She has not acknowledged that I was the one
who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil,
who lavished on her the silver and gold—
which they used for Baal. Hosea 2:8

She’d forgotten that God is the ultimate provider of all things. That everything belongs to Him. And that therefore all good things should be used for good purposes as part of a life consecrated to God and not desecrated by other idols. She’d forgotten to acknowledge God’s hand in her life, God’s provision.

So this was the response –

“Therefore I will take away my grain when it ripens,
and my new wine when it is ready.
I will take back my wool and my linen,
intended to cover her naked body.
So now I will expose her lewdness
before the eyes of her lovers;
no one will take her out of my hands.
I will stop all her celebrations:
her yearly festivals, her New Moons,
her Sabbath days—all her appointed festivals.
I will ruin her vines and her fig trees,
which she said were her pay from her lovers;
I will make them a thicket,
and wild animals will devour them.
I will punish her for the days
she burned incense to the Baals;
she decked herself with rings and jewellery,
and went after her lovers,
but me she forgot,” Hosea 2:9-13

There will be consequences of forgetting God. God will remove all good things from her life to show her what it is like to be without, to remind her where all good things come from. He will remove His provision from her life – food and drink and clothes – all that she took for granted previously. He will destroy her reputation by exposing her wrongdoing – the truth will out, as they say. No one will want anything to do with her any more. There will be nothing to celebrate – God will take away all the religious traditions, the structure of faith, the institutions that facilitated worship and relationship with God. Everything that she’s attributed to her lovers instead of God will be ruined.

This reminds me a little of Job and how everything was stripped away to test his faith, prompting Job to say –

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised.” Job 1:21

It reminds me too of the book we have just studied, Daniel. Of how all the trappings of the Jewish faith are removed as the people enter exile in Babylon and have to work out how to live out their faith without the institution and place of worship and established festivals of their religion.

All too often, isn’t this the case?