Dew of Grace

Written by Becca Harris.

Sometimes I wish I could be the same girl my husband thought he married.

Hear me out- when I met my husband, it was easy to always put my best foot forward. He saw only what I wanted him to see and I’m sure he thought I was great (I mean, he married me, after all!). As time has gone on, I have felt vulnerable from the guilt of all my flaws and imperfections slowly seeping out for him to see. Things I wish no one except me could know.

How much more deeply does God know every flaw and imperfection in our lives? He knows the parts even those closest to us don’t know- our thoughts, our inner struggles.

Jeremiah 1:5 says, “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee…”

To be honest, this idea is one I have always wrestled with. God created me and knew I would be stubborn, prone to impatience, quickly frustrated, the list goes on. Yet He calls us to a life that is the opposite of all these characteristics. Why would He make me so…imperfect?

When God chose Gomer for His child Hosea, He knew exactly who she was, too. He knew she was a promiscuous woman with a tendency to backslide. He knew she would bring pain and heartache to Hosea- yet He chose her for this purpose. I imagine Gomer probably felt ill-equipped and inadequate being called to marry a prophet of God.

Throughout the book of Hosea, we read of Gomer’s tumultuous life full of rising and falling, and her tendency to run from Hosea (a picture of us in our tendencies to running from God). However, this sets the perfect stage for redemption in Chapter 14:

“I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for mine anger is turned away from him. I will be as the dew unto Israel: he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon (v. 4-5).”

If Gomer was a perfect wife, this would be your everyday love story. But because of her imperfections, it’s God’s redemptive love story. God knows every inner flaw, fault, and sin in us, and He loves us freely. When we run to Him, He heals our backsliding. He is the dew of grace on our lives. He grows deeper roots within us and blossoms us as lilies.

He doesn’t see us as a “once perfect” spouse who only now is fully known. He sees us as His chosen sons and daughters. He uses our flaws and imperfections to draw us nearer to Him in a way that He ordained before we were even born, for His purpose, for His glory.

The beauty of this story is not in who Gomer is, but in who God is to her…and who He is to us, despite our imperfections.