Walking the Way: A daily devotional

Joel 1:4 What the fledging locust left,     the adult locust has eaten; what the adult locust left,     the larval locust has eaten; what the larval locust left,     the hopper locust has eaten. Thought for the day – Locusts When I was a kid, probably about 11 or 12, we were living in a very rural part of South Africa. I remember waking up one morning to this incredible buzzing sound. A swarm of locusts had enveloped the little town we were in. And by the morning, they had stripped every green thing of its leaves and its flowers. There were tens of thousands of these giant hopping Black and yellow locusts that just devoured everything. It was scary. If it was a problem then, it's still a problem today. So much so that in 1986, the Senegalese government sprayed 1,000,000 acres of land with pesticide to kill off the locusts in the area. One square foot of land can contain up to 1000 newly hatched locusts. And a single locust c...

  Hosea 14:9 Whoever is wise, let him understand these things;     whoever prudent, let him know them. For the ways of the Lord are right,     and the just will walk in them;     but the transgressors stumble in them.   Thought for the day – The same road I love walking. But there's something I noticed on every single walk that I go on. I might enjoy the walk but the path that I'm walking on doesn't care about me. It's the same puddles, the same slopes, same stones. So, I walk along it not thinking about it and the next thing I've either stepped in a puddle, or I've turned my ankle over on a stone. And the reason why I'm talking about paths not caring and me walking on them is that because actually as we read Hosea's last chapter today and the very last words of Hosea, that's what we're dealing with, we're dealing with the ways of the Lord. And irrespective how we feel about them, the ways of the Lord are right. T...

  Hosea 13:14 I will ransom them from the power of Sheol. I will redeem them from death. Death, where are your barbs? Sheol, where is your sting? Compassion is hidden from my eyes.   Thought for the day – What God wants of us I’ve been reading a book called 4000 weeks. Any guesses to what it might mean? Well, it’s the number of weeks we have to live if we live to 77 years old. The book is about realising that we only have a finite time on this earth and that trying to micromanage our time is futile because to paraphrase the philosopher Heidigger, because we are temporal and corporeal, we are time.   It’s a challenging read because as a Christian, I firmly believe in the concept of life after death and that we as followers of Jesus have nothing to fear when we die, because of Jesus and because he will bring us through death to see the face and the glory of God. Our verse today is echoed by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 as he talks about how Christ has overco...

  Hosea 12:6 But you must return to your God. Maintain love and justice, and always put your hope in God.   Thought for the day – What God wants of us There is a wonderful image that has been created that shows the links between different Bible verses. Created by Chris Harrison and Pastor Christoph Romhild, it links every cross reference in the Bible. All 63779 of them. That’s a lot of cross references, but the one that stood out for me from today’s chapter was how similar today’s verse was to Michah 6:8 ‘Mankind, he has told each of you what is good and what it is the Lord requires of you: to act justly, to love faithfulness, and to walk humbly with your God.’ If we believe that God speaks to us through Scripture then to hear the same message a number of times, probably means we should pay attention. So what is God saying to us here. Firstly in the context of Hosea, it’s a message of how far they had slipped from how God wanted them to behave. This is what Micah...

  Hosea 11:3 It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the hand, but they never knew that I healed them.   Thought for the day – Father heart of God. Hosea is a hard book to read. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it’s hard. But as Biblical scholar Derek Kidner puts it Hosea ‘is one of the boldest … in exposing us to the mind and heart of God in human terms.’ And we see that in today’s chapter. We see God as a father teaching his children to walk, taking them by the hand as they grow up and then watching them walk away from him and forgetting who he was and what he had done for them. It is a heart-breaking image. And in our chapter today we see a tension between the image of God who is Almighty and image of a God who loves us like a gentle father. And if I’m honest, I’m not quite sure where to go with that. Maybe it’s one of the images we are just encouraged to sit with and wonder about. That’s not a cop out because it’s something we all struggle...

Hosea 10:12 Sow for yourselves righteousness;     reap steadfast love;     break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord,     that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.   Thought for the day – What God wants We used to live in Kent and across the road from our estate was an open field that lay fallow for a large part of the time we were there. It was peaceful and easy to walk on. And fallow ground feels restful, even a bit virtuous. Nothing's wrong, nothing's growing, nothing needs fixing. Almost sounds like some of our churches.   But that is not an image Hosea presents. Fallow ground isn't peaceful or restful ground, here it's hardened ground. It's the heart that has stopped expecting anything. And the prophet's word is blunt: break it up. Get the plough out. It's time. And ploughing is difficult. Ploughing tears things up and breaks things down. Nobody breaks up hard soil gently.   John Wesley was well ...