I’m devoting the next few weeks to working on a project that’s going to demand most of my mental energy. So apart from the usual Mon-Fri Checkout which will continue, I won’t be writing an additional daily article. Instead, I’m going to post a series of daily devotionals on Hosea that I wrote a few years ago.


I will….bring her into the wilderness and speak comfortably unto her” (Hosea 2:14).

Most of us would prefer being taken to a palace with all its comforts rather than a wilderness with all its dangers. But here God promises His people a wilderness which is full of comforts — comforts that cannot be enjoyed in any palace.

God was promising Israel that they would be conquered and taken captive by foreign powers as a punishment for sin. This was to be a wilderness experience with many dangers and sufferings. The people would be hungry, harmed, far away from home, and especially far away from God and His Temple. Surely nothing good could come out of this! But wait; God says He “will bring her into the wilderness and speak comfortably to her.” He will combine the uncomfortable wilderness with comfortable words.

This was Israel’s experience in the wilderness of foreign exile. There, in the midst of their sin-caused sorrow, God spoke words of promise and hope to the repentant. How often this is the Christian’s experience. When we are in comfortable situations, we become increasingly deaf to God’s voice. We do not need to hear it, we think. So God brings us into the most uncomfortable situations in order to speak to us in a way we will hear.

You are told you have cancer. As you leave the clinic, you feel like you are in a waste-howling wilderness. You sense great danger. Fear of pain and death overwhelm you. A lonely path of surgery and chemotherapy stretches ahead of you. The world feels so bitterly cold and hostile. You get home and fall on your knees as you sob and cry out, “Lord! Lord! Help, help, help!”

And there, in the midst of that wilderness moment, God begins to draw near. Comforting verses of Scripture begin to circulate in your mind and filter down to your troubled heart. As He soothes and reassures, you sense the intimate love of your heavenly Father. And, for moments, you think that this feels more like a palace than a wilderness.

If only it wasn’t always so necessary for us to be brought into the uncomfortable wilderness to desire and delight in God’s comfortable words!