A short rhyme from John Piper’s poem about Hosea and Gomer caught my attention:

Think not, my son, that God’s great river
Of love flows simply to the sea,
He aims not straight, but to deliver
The wayward soul like you and me.
Follow the current where it goes,
With love and grace it ever flows.

You can read the poem here, and you can listen to Piper’s reading the poem here. At the end of his reading, Piper actually sang the verse. Piper described it as a song that Hosea sang for his family when finally all things are settled, Gomer quitted from selling herself to strangers, and the children grew up willing to love God, and Hosea as the only one prophet who was asked to marry a prostitute – to show God’s love to Israel (in a very strange way – and hurtful way for Hosea in personal) finally found his peace.

I love – I LOVE the way Piper rephrased the story:

And so it was, Hosea heard
The Lord. It was the strangest word
A holy prophet ever got:
And every pointed precept shot
Like arrows at Hosea’s life:
“Go take a harlot for your wife,”
Thus says the Lord, “And feel with me
The grief and pain of harlotry.”

Feel with God – the grief and pain He has when the one He loves so much slip away from Him and from His love, to trade her body and soul to strangers. Feel with God – the grief and pain of rejected love, a love that is pure and strong, yet it’s despised by us.

Feel with me, God said. Feel with God…

Have I ever felt with God – sharing His feeling with me, His grief, His sorrow, His pain? Am I willing to share His mourning about the wayward souls I know? Or am I the harlot – the prostitute who sells my soul to some strangers, savoring the short delight in sin and errors, with disgrace of God’s love for me?

When God allows me to have some grief in my life – losing my loved one, being rejected and misunderstood, or any other pain I had to go through sometimes, is it actually the time that God said to me, “Feel with me, the grief and pain?”

I had loved someone so deep more than I thought I could ever do. I had tried to give my best so much more than I thought I could ever give. But yet, my best can’t be compared to how God loves, to how God gives to His people. He has loved us to the very best – giving His own Son to death for you, and me. But still we say no, thanks but no thanks to His grace. Do I feel God’s pain when I see my brothers and sisters reject His love?

When God allows me to have some grief in my life – am I willing to feel with Him? Or I immediately aim my hands above and cry, “How come You, of all people who claims that You’re a good God, let me to have this pain? How come You say You love me when all You give me is pain?”

Hosea (in Piper’s poem) sang this song to his son and daughter – that God’s river of love, sometimes don’t flow in a simple way, but what seems to us as ‘complicated ways’ are used by God to cleanse our soul, deliver us and make us free. His long and winding road is sometimes His way to say to you in His gentle voice, “Feel with Me, My grief and pain of your lost brothers.” When we can’t see His way, just follow the stream – and remember, that His Love and His Grace, are the strongest assurance for us that His way will never go wrong.

So I will sing this rhyme again today, and maybe tomorrow – when I can’t seem to understand.

Think not, my son, that God’s great river
Of love flows simply to the sea,
He aims not straight, but to deliver
The wayward soul like you and me.
Follow the current where it goes,
With love and grace it ever flows.