"I will return again to my place, until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face, and in their distress they see me, saying, ‘Come, let us return to the Lord; for he has torn, that he may heal us; he has stricken, and he will bind us up.’ "

A woman was filling out an employment application. When she came to the line marked "age," she hesitated a long time. Finally, the personnel manager leaned across his desk and whispered to her, "The longer you wait, the worse it gets!"

That’s true of repentance and returning to God, too. The longer you put it off, the harder it is to do it.

Hosea, in the context and in this text, uses bold images of God - he pictures God as a ravaging lion and even as a man who absents himself from his disobedient people. He withdraws from those worshipers who thought…