Loving When It Hurts - Hosea

When the LORD first began speaking to Israel through Hosea, he said to him, “Go and marry a prostitute, so that some of her children will be conceived in prostitution.”

Hosea 1:2

In 1943, as World War II hit its full stride, 903 troops and four chaplains—George L. Fox, Alexander D. Goode, John P. Washington, and Clark V. Poling—boarded the USAT Dorchester on a dreary winter day and headed across the frigid North Atlantic where German U-boats prowled.

Just past midnight on February 3, a German torpedo ripped into the ship’s side, sending the men scrambling for the lifeboats. As the Dorchester began to founder, someone discovered that there weren’t enough life jackets to go around.

In a wonderful picture of self-sacrifice, the four chaplains stripped off their own life jackets and gave them to other men. Then they linked arms and lifted their voices in prayer as the Dorchester went down.

Apart from Jesus, there may be no better biblical example of sacrificial love than the Old Testament prophet Hosea.

You wouldn’t wish Hosea’s family life on your worst enemy. God commanded him to marry a prostitute named Gomer as an object lesson of God’s love for the wayward nation of Israel.

It’s hard to imagine how a man of God like Hosea felt as he looked at his dimming prospects for a happy family life, but Hosea heard God and obeyed.

Before long, Gomer left Hosea and returned to her old ways, but Hosea, who obeyed God even when it meant agonizing self-sacrifice, refused to let Gomer go. Instead, he pursued her and brought her back home.

Hosea sacrificed himself to love someone completely unworthy of his love. In so doing, he painted a real-life picture of God’s love for his rebellious people and set an example of the love we should have for the unlovable.

Sooner or later, you’re going to meet someone who is, in human thinking, “unlovable,” but God calls us to be vessels of his self-sacrificing love to such people. Sometimes that means giving and loving until it hurts—just as God loved you when he sent his Son to die.