These last few months have felt like a dream, a very good dream. Our kids finally have a house with their own backyard. We are part of a church extension-campus plant near our house. My kids are all basically healthy. My husband loves his job. This many good things all happening at the same time—including a couple unmentioned things—I think this is the first time in my life to have all of those things, ever.
It’s been a season of thankfulness. Not the “I will offer my sacrifice of thanksgiving, because it’s a sacrifice.” But the “I can’t help but be thankful” kind of thankfulness.
It’s easy for me to remember that God is good when things are going well. And it’s this season of blessings that sets the stage for the verse that keeps replaying in my head. I didn’t plan to meditate on this verse. But there it was, like a record set on repeat, the verse that I couldn’t help but think about:
“For she does not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the new wine and the oil, and lavished on her silver and gold, which they used for Baal.” Hosea 2:8
When I hear this verse in my head, the words that haunt me most are “she does not know that it was I.” And I believe the message for me is this, “Don’t forget for even one second that it is GOD who gives you the house, the health, the church. If I have money to buy groceries, that comes from the LORD. Every one of these good gifts come from above, from the Father of Lights.”
It’s a warning to me. “Don’t become like Israel and begin to think that the things you want come from people and places other than God.”
Right before the verse I wrote, God says this: “Therefore, behold, I will hedge up her way with thorns, and I will build a wall against her so that she cannot find her paths. She will pursue her lovers, but she will not overtake them; and she will seek them, but will not find them. Then she will say, ‘I will go back to my first husband, for it was better for me then than now!’ For she does not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the new wine and the oil, and lavished on her silver and gold, which they used for Baal.”
When I read this, I get chills. I think of the things people do to get money and how Israel pursued the other nations to get wealthy. Israel wasn’t just following the other nations and worshipping their idols out of kindness. She wanted the riches and oil and food and the wine that those nations would give her.
Though our idols are different today than they were then, much of what motivates us is the same.
And God is saying, “That wealth was never from the other nations and their idols. They may have been giving you gold, but you weren't getting gold from them. It was always from me. I lavished on you all the riches you thought came from the other nations.”
And in this season of life, this is the closest I have ever gotten to having so many things I have wanted. And it was when Israel had everything they wanted—grain, new wine, oil, silver, gold—that they forgot it came from the Lord.
So my prayer for you and I is that we would always remember everything good we have comes from God. And that we would never forget to thank Him for it.
