Tehillah Generation Chapel
Daily Manna | Wednesday, June 6, 2018 | Topic: Conscience 38
Scripture: My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children. Hosea 4:6
Note: Gomer’s biggest disappointment in her marriage was when she realised that it was business as usual after the birth of their first child. She had waited patiently for this precious baby, knowing that the joy of fatherhood and motherhood was going to bring about a dramatic turnaround to the dwindling fortunes in their relationship. This monumental disappointment was the last straw that broke the camel’s back for Gomer. Her expectations were nothing more than the desire for attention, and love from her husband for all the emotional distress she had been through during the pregnancy.
Depression and bitterness are some of the fallouts from disappointed women in relationships where subtle abandonment under the guise of busyness for the Lord’s work is cleverly deployed by delinquent husbands to hide their gross dereliction, negligence and failing. The past life of Gomer didn’t suffer lack of lovers who showered her with physical attention and emotional fulfilment, albeit temporarily. Gomer had numerous lovers who lavished her with riches and abundant rewards. Although her comparative life in marriage brought her respect, stability, safety and peace, she had endured inconsistencies that exposed her vulnerability to a life that always ensured that there was a man by her side.
Gomer’s failed expectations of a redemption through the difficult experiences of carrying a pregnancy to term and successfully delivering their first baby, without the concrete support of her prophet husband, who was very busy in the mission field saving lives in Israel, must have combined inauspiciously to deepen the unseen cracks in her relationship with Hosea. With only her old friends in the street hawking game of prostitution, Gomer was reminded that the rewards of her old lifestyle could serve as an alternative income stream for her independence from a loveless and emotionally unfulfilling marriage.
The decision of a journey into alienation from her husband had just begun. This journey began as a replica serving of the same unwanted recipe that she had been fed with. Gomer gradually began to spend less and less time within the confines of her matrimonial home. It was a progressive trend of her frequent absence from home with the excuse of tendering the fig, vine and corn farms that she acquired during her infamous past life. This excuse was however, ostensibly to spend more time with her numerous lovers. She was accustomed to a life with a lover always by her side. The calling of her husband didn’t permit him the luxury of always being by her side. Gomer couldn’t take this new lifestyle of being married to a busy man of God any longer. She went back to what she had always known best in her past life.
Food for thought: Excuses and reasons for failure are the usual cliché since the beginning. Accepting responsibility for our actions or inactions is the path to redemption.
Declaration: The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” Genesis 3:12
©Author: Rev Fred Aboe
