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Reaping the whirlwind


 Hosea 8:7

For they sow the wind,
    and they shall reap the whirlwind.
The standing grain has no heads;
    it shall yield no meal;
if it were to yield,
    foreigners would devour it.

Thought for the day – Reaping the whirlwind
Yesterday we talked about how we all have some sort of oppositional defiance disorder. It’s called sin and the root of our spiritual ODD is our rebellion against God both in the Garden of Eden at the beginning and our ongoing rebellion is our sinful natures. And like all rebellions there are consequences. We sow the seeds and then wonder why we reap the whirlwind. 

It’s almost as if we are too blind or unwilling to see the consequences of our actions. So, for instance, the church pastor that gets a little too close to their PA; or the Christian business owner that doesn’t keep to all the legislation; The church goer who is an absolute saint on Sunday but abuses their spouse during the week. All of these have consequences. Not all of them earthly, but all of them spiritual. And this is what God is addressing in our chapter today. Our refusal to see that when we violate God’s commands, we will face consequences. 

I go back to a verse we haven’t read yet in Hosea 11:8 ‘“How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel?”’ A reminder that even when we rebel and turn away from God, He is there watching out for us. Yes, the consequences will come from our rebellion, but to quote a line from an old hymn: 

‘We have an anchor that keeps the soul
steadfast and sure while the billows roll;
fastened to the Rock which cannot move,
grounded firm and deep in the Savior’s love.

There is always hope. 


This blog post is part of the Walking the Way Podcast series. All views expressed in this essay are those of the author. This essay is freely available under Creative Commons License with Attribution-ShareAlike, allowing users to share it in other mediums/formats and adapt/translate the content as long as an attribution link, indication of changes, and the same Creative Commons License applies to that material.

This work is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0





 

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