Hosea 11:4 “I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love. To them I was like one who lifts a little child to the cheek, and I bent down to feed them.” [NIV]
God meets us right where we are. And he often uses human kindness to do it.
I was thinking of that this week. Of how God met my poor, human, romantic heart by having my future husband pick me up hitchhiking at the Grand Canyon. God orchestrated a love story filled with more adventure, delight and fulfillment than I could ever have imagined. Hitchhiking? Really God? It proved to be quite a move to touch a girl who’d been scarred by a broken home.
And as if that wasn’t enough, God met my maternal longings with children and grandkids. He made me a college professor, an author of (soon-to-be) four books. Sometimes I think, Who? Me? But just as remarkable, God has made me an escapee from self-centeredness. He has turned my disappointments into fertile soil for hope, my many weaknesses into strengths.
He met me through “cords of human kindness.”
That phrase, human kindness, comes from Hosea 11. Israel had rebelled against God, forgetting that were it not for him, they wouldn’t even be a nation. Their idolatry, greed and smug self-sufficiency warranted devastation, but he refused to destroy them. “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel?” (v. 8). Instead, he met them with human kindness. Ties of love they could tangibly see, hear, feel. He used human terms to convey that his love was like a father embracing his children, a papa bending down to feed his little ones.
The cords of God’s kindness extend to all of us humans. Even when we don’t deserve it. Even when we refuse him again and again. When we take credit for his works, turning our backs on his faithfulness. And when we don’t even realize every good gift we have comes from him.
Few of us lived charmed lives. We exist under the shadow of the fall. But it’s a shadow God wants to infuse with light and with life. And he will do it through the cords of human kindness. How I pray you recognize him.