The Unstructured Wilderness:

Therefore I am now going to allure her;

I will lead her into the desert

and speak tenderly to her.

 

There I will give her back her vineyards,

and will make the Valley of Achor (trouble) a door of hope.

There she will sing as in the days of her youth,

as in the day she came up out of Egypt.

 

"In that day," declares the Lord,

"you will call me 'my husband';

you will no longer call me 'my master' (Hosea 2:14-16).

 

I asked "Where/When/How/Why does the Holy Spirit speak to us?"  And the answers are as varied as the persons answering them, of course.   

 

One of the answers to these questions is surely given to us in the Book of Hosea.  Hosea was one of the prophets of Israel; he was married to a woman who could not keep herself from wandering off with various lovers and deserting both Hosea and their children.  Gomer, the adulteress, is a type of Israel, who, espoused and covenanted to Yahweh, nevertheless continually wandered off in seach of other gods and who sacrificed her children to all the Baals of the pagans:

 

Hear the word of the Lord, you Israelites,

because the Lord has a charge to bring

against you who live in the land:

"There is no faithfulness, no love,

no acknowledgment of God in the land.

 

There is only cursing, lying, and murder,

stealing and adultery;

they break all bounds,

and bloodshed follows bloodshed.

 

Because of this, the land mourns,

and all who live in it waste away;

the beasts of the field and the birds of the air

and the fish of the sea are dying ---....

 

my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge (Hosea 4:1-5).

 

The Israelites are stubborn,

like a stubborn heifer.

How then can the Lord pasture them

like lambs in a meadow? (4:16)....

 

a spirit of prostitution leads them astray;

they are unfaithful to their God (4:12).

 

Like us, Israel had the Law, the Temple, and the priests.  When these guidelines failed to keep them faithful to their God, He also sent prophets to call them back to Himself.  But, as the Book of Romans would tell us many centuries afterwards (quoting several Old Testament Scriptures), "there is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understand, no one who seeks God" (3:10).

 

There comes a time in every life where the 'guidelines' -- the priests, the prophets, the church, the law ---all fall on deaf ears, for one reason or another.  There seems to be nothing that speaks to us, either because of our sin or the sins of those who are leading us.  Or perhaps it is our wounds, our griefs, our desolation and depression that lead us into the desert, the unstructured wilderness, where we can find no path, no roadmap, no way out of the place where life has taken us.

 

There, where the guidelines no longer have any meaning for us; there, in the desert, will the God of heaven and earth, speak tenderly to our hearts.  There he will whisper to us His words of love and compassion, of Truth and of guidance.  And we will know His Voice in the desert, in the wilderness where there is nothing else to go by:  in grief, in trouble ("the Valley of Achor"), when we are bowed down and have no direction, the Spirit of the Lord will speak to us, and we "will sing as in the days of our youth."

 

Jeremiah puts it this way:

 

"...after that time" [of grief, of trouble, of the unstructured wilderness where there are no guidelines],

"I will put my law in their minds

and write it on their hearts.

I will be their God,

and they will be my people.

No longer will a man teach his neighbor,

or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,'

because they will all know me,

from the least of them to the greatest," declares the Lord (31:33-34).

 

The Spirit of the Lord wants to enscripture our hearts; he wants to write on our hearts and our minds His own words to us.  Then "we will sing as in the days of our youth."  Then we will call Him "husband" and no longer "Master," just as Jesus told His disciples: "I no longer call you 'servants,' but 'friends'."  The Holy Spirit comes to us when we are in the desert, the wilderness, when we are hungry, thirsty, and without resources.  There he speaks tenderly to us.  There He whispers words of love.  There He sends His own light and truth, writing on our hearts words that we can never forget.

 

Then we will no longer wander off after other lovers and foreign gods, for we will be fully satisfied.