Sunday is Special

Do you know the story of Hosea?  How he was married to his wife but she left him to be a prostitute? How God's plan for Hosea's life was to go find his wife after she abandoned him and to love her and to take her back, despite her sin, despite his own personal pain?
And God's plan for this in Hosea's life was so that Hosea would be a picture of God Himself.  It is the perfect picture of God and his response to His people - the Israelites in that age and now including even me as His child today.  When I sin and go my own way, God doesn't give up on me.  He knows I am His child and He has promised that He will never desert or leave or forsake me.
At the end of the book of Hosea in chapter 14, in part of verse 4, God says of His apostate people, "I will love them freely."  What a declaration! What hope is in that statement!  God says to me, His disobedient child, no matter what you've done,

"I will love you freely."