The LORD said to me, "Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress" So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and [ten bushels] of barley. Then I told her, "You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will wait for you."
(Hosea 3:1-3 NIV)
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The last time I went was on November 18'th. I still have my invitation on my desk. It's one of the things I live for. It is a milestone. Not in my life, but in the lives of many people I know. No matter what happens I will drop everything for the opportunity to go to what, in my opinion, is one of the greatest graduation ceremonies I could have the privilege to attend. It is certainly far better than my graduation where I sat through three tedious hours of pomp and circumstance to walk down and receive a piece of paper. That was about me jumping through intellectual and academic hoops. What I attended a month ago is also about classes completed, but far more it is about lives changed.
I've known about Teen Challenge nearly all my life. It was probably around first grade that I read The Cross And The Switchblade, the story about how the organization first started. The churches I grew up in both in Syracuse and Rochester both supported the local TC and we would have the guys come in and share their testimonies. At college I had classmates who were TC graduates. My cousin Will worked at the original TC center in Brooklyn for a year.
But it all became a bit more personal when some of the local students were in my Wednesday night class. All of a sudden they weren't just spiritual trophies for the church to hold up. They were women who were in the process of being changed. They were individuals who had the courage to step away from the life controlling addictions that were killing them and work and fight for the level of freedom that I so flippantly take for granted.
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So when I hear the words "and I will wait for you", I imagine the deep concern Hosea has in the process. He bought her freedom. But she has to win that freedom as well. Just like God has bought my salvation, yet I am commanded to "work out my salvation with fear and trembling". Each day is a battle to live victoriously. It's like the incoming tide, each day a wave. Some days I don't seem as close as the day before, but the next day I will push farther. And He is there.
I can imagine the urge, the desire, that Gomer must have felt on a daily basis. I am sure there were days when she felt like throwing in the towel. There were days when she had her hand on the door handle ready to walk out on him again. But she fought for her freedom. Every day, every hour, every minute a battle. I don't know exactly what it must be like to fight so hard for freedom, but I know people who have fought, who are fighting that battle. Their courage amazes me. It inspires me. Their battle drives me to my knees.
And that is what November 18'th is all about. It is an opportunity for me to have the privilege of sharing in the victory. I come together with the families and friends of some of these victors to celebrate their completion... their graduation. I can remember the recognition they have, with God's grace, earned. I can imagine Hosea there. A tear in his eye as he watches one of those women. She is free for a moment from the well wishers crowding her and he comes up. Others back away to give him privacy as he puts his arms around his wife. Holding each other so tight it hurts, he whispers in her ear, "I have waited for you."
