Can we love freely?

We live in a world afloat with love stories, but most of them are not at all stories about love. They are just sex stories, fantasy tales driven by lust and novels about domination and control. 
The word ‘love’ is used so cheaply these days that it makes all our understanding about relationships messy.  But, we need love, we can’t live, really live — without love. 
That’s why we are attracted to real love stories for without love we are mere animals fighting for survival and existence. 

There is this true love story in history that I like to share with you. It's the story of a guy who was summoned to marry a prostitute.  The man was truthful and loyal, pure and humble, honest and brave, esteemed in his community and coming from a good background, he had all the boxes ticked when it came to ‘best guy in town’. Surprisingly, he is guided to marry Gomer the well known  ‘whore’ in town. Humbly and lovingly he overlooks all his good principled traits and marries her. 

She is the very opposite of him. Her profession has made her a manipulator and a liar. She is vulnerable, yet strong because she has survived one of the harshest ways of  making a living. She has not a good name, nor she can claim any family connections in her community, for she is left alone to face a life of shame and danger. 

Hosea, our good guy has nothing to ‘get’ from Gomer our 'bad' girl. 
Yet, he loves her, he gives her a family home and together they have children.
He loves her best at her very worst. 

As Christians we use ‘God is love’ so much in our day to day lives that we have somehow tarnished the very meaning of that truth. 
What does it mean to us? Really? How our lives are different from others by that truth?  Are we living well? 

The story of Hosea and Gomer is used as a parable to show the way God loves us. His, is a free love, no strings attached there! 
That why ‘good works and philanthropy, striving to be moral and perfect’ are all prohibited when it comes to how and why God loves us. Don’t get me wrong, we do all good works and all the giving we can, we put all the efforts to living a fulfilling life, but not as a way to get to be loved by Him, but from a place of knowing that we are freely, deeply and lavishly loved by Him. 

For God loves very much as Hosea does. He comes after us when we are not looking for Him. He offers His compassion at our very worst. He pursues and rescues us over and over and over again until He makes us lovers of men and women and ourselves who know nothing about true and free love.

The true story of Hosea and Gomer give us a little glimpse into what true love really is.  
Their graphic and vivid life helps us to step further into our healing from all sentimentality we have twisted, adapted and believed about love. We start first by loving God who loves us at our worst and then loving our neighbour who doesn’t love us often at our best. 

What does loving freely means to you?  Love to chat 🤗🤗

 
Reference Hosea 14:4 NIV 
 

​Photo Credit to  J D Mason 

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