We interrupt your regularly-scheduled book review nonsense for a THEOLOGY POST!!!! Please try to remain calm. (For anyone new, I used to do about a theology post per week, normally titled Theology Thursday. Been a while.)
It's reeeeally been some time since I've done a non-book-review theology post. In fact, it's been about four months. In the meantime, I've pressed on with my yearly Bible read-through and just haven't been much inspired to scrawl down anything. I guess the problem is that I don't have much new to say about the New Testament Epistles or the Major Prophets. Maybe next year. But I always manage to find a cool new verse in the Minor Prophets, it seems. I just don't generally have all that much to say about them. But I was struck by this verse in Hosea:
Hosea 6:3 (ESV)
3 Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD;
his going out is sure as the dawn;
he will come to us as the showers,
as the spring rains that water the earth.
This verse is in the context of God's people returning to serving him, realizing that he won't be angry forever but will eventually restore them if only they repent. But just love the idea of pressing on to know God, as if it's something that takes effort. And the effort is rewarded.
Can I just say how much I love Hebrew poetry? Sometimes the parallelism is just so cool! The language of the second half of the verse reminds me of a lunchtime run I took once during the summer, and it was hot. I had gotten about halfway into the loop I was running (probably not much more than two miles total, but that can be a long way when it's hot), when it started to rain.
At first it was just a little bit, but soon it absolutely came down in sheets. Now normally I'm not a huge fan of running in the rain, because it tends to be cold. But it came at such a perfect time and gave me the lift I needed, that I ended up laughing my way back to the office. I had been so tired, and now I was just refreshed.
This is the kind of blessing we should expect from knowing God. And here I'm reminded of another verse about "times of refreshing"…quick internet search here. Ah, yes. Peter preaching at Pentecost:
Acts 3:17-21 (ESV, emphasis mine)
17 "And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. 18 But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. 19 Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, 20 that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, 21 whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.
I couldn't find this in any cross-references, but I'm definitely putting it in the NRSV (New Revised Seth Version) Study Bible.
Stay tuned; I may just do another of these before the year is up.