Gold Nugget 205 - Wandering Estrangement
There is an estrangement from God that is easily recognized. One wanders from holiness into corrupt imaginations, evil associations, gross habits, till all manly virtue or womanly grace is gone, and parents’ tears or kindly words avail nothing. Another wanders from truth and righteousness, turning his back on these, because they seem opposed to present interest, and so he gets entangled in crooked policy and tortuous expedients. Another wanders from love, till there is discord in the home, suspicion and enmity in the heart. …
We are more concerned about some who are guilty of sin, but not of crime; who are irreligious, but not immoral. Their condition is more perilous, because less likely to cause them alarm; yet what more lamentable in God’s sight than a prayerless, godless man? …
Imagine your son being to you what the godless man is to God. You watched over his infancy, sacrificed yourself for his comfort … You expect to reap the fruit of all this in his love, to be glad in his success, to live over again in him. But he becomes a man, and has no thought or care for you. Cheerful in the society of others, he never gives his father a look or a smile.
Is there no wrong in that, even though he may fulfill his duties to his neighbours and his country? But by-and-by he breaks down in his schemes; his brilliant course is run, his friends forsake him; then, poor and broken, he comes back to you, and in your pardon and kindness he feels and knows what you are, and how true all along your love has been.
On his past negligence all the world would cry “Shame!” Yet what has he done that the moral, respected, yet godless man is not doing every day of his life? To such the message is sent, “Come, and let us return unto the Lord.”
The Pulpit Commentary, Hosea p. 181, Hosea 6:1, (A. Rowland)
Gold Nugget 205
Wandering Estrangement
