I just recently finished reading the Old Testament (again).  If you think your life it tough, read about Hosea.  He appears to have fallen in love with a prostitute–one whom God told him to marry.  It’s been said that if we knew the kind of pain our married future would hold, that many of us may never have taken the plunge.  Hosea knew.  God had told him ahead of time that in his wife, Gomer’s case, “for better or worse” would nearly always be “worse.  But his extraordinary decision to marry a woman he knew would repeatedly break his heart gives us an inside picture of God’s love his people.  God knew before the beginning of time that men and women would choose the knowledge of evil.  He knew that Israel would turn to idols.  He knew that the love of many would “wax cold.”  Yet from the start, His plan was to provide a deliverer in the person of His Son, Jesus.  I’ve been saved for over 43 years and I’m still amazed how God pledged his love to us in Christ in the full knowledge of what we would be like.  He knew how slow, selfish, and stubborn we would be, and he still loved us.  He loves us, completely aware of our deepest and most consistent failures of our lives.  He does not wait for us to fix our lives before He takes us on.  “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”
(Rom 5:8 NIV).  Hosea shows us that even man can love despite knowing the hurt that the object of our love can cause.  With God, it is who He is.