“They gorge themselves, but are never full. They sleep with everything in sight, but they’re sterile. This is because they’ve neglected the Holy One” (Hosea 4.10).
God-shaped hole. I heard that term a lot when I was a teenager. Maybe you’ve heard it or read it as well. It’s the description of the part of us that only Jesus can fill. It’s the place that, if we don’t give our life to Christ, we will attempt to stuff full with all the things of this world: money, sex, status, power. It’s the absence that only Christ’s presence can fill.
Hosea’s words seem to imply something like this. Because the people have not cultivated a relationship with the Holy One, have tried to satisfy that lonely and hungry place within themselves with the things of this world instead of those of Heaven they find themselves still in want, still empty.
People sleep around, trying to satisfy the need for love only the Divine can feed. We buy and own physical things—cars, toys, books—to attempt to fill a spiritual hole. And no matter how much sex we have or how many things we own, nothing satisfies. Nothing fills that space.
And that’ll preach to a youth or young adult group. But, for the adult class, we need to dig deeper. Because the word Hosea’s brought isn’t about empty spaces or unsatisfied desires but about trying to be like God.
We fall into a bit of trouble when we take prophets too literally. At a surface level, we can get stuck on the physicality of Hosea’s words. Gluttony and lust are two of the deadly sins, those that lead us to our own destruction and harm others. And they are the source of much of our suffering these days from our wounded environment to the allegations and revelations of abuse coming to light throughout Christianity.
But the story of the Garden was never one of earthly appetites—a taste for what had never been tasted or satisfying the desire of our flesh. It was and always is the temptation to be like God. To be, put simply, god.
“If I hungered, I’d say nothing to you; for, the whole world is mine” says the Holy One. There is, for gods, always enough; because, it all belongs to them. And so, we devour. We take and hoard and use indiscriminately not because we are trying to fill some emptiness and need but to show that we have no needs. As broken creatures, we want to show all of creation, including God, that we too are beyond scarcity, beyond hunger. We are, we want to say, fully satisfied.
Yet, we are not. Hosea’s words speak to this truth that there is not enough to satisfy ourselves; because, we are not gods. And our appetites are limitless.
Ultimately, we must admit that we are not gods, and surrender to the wisdom that God alone is. And, then, we will know there is enough. We’ll find that we can share our hunger, our desires, our needs; because, they are part of us all.
And what we thought was absence is evidence of Presence.
Holy One, you alone are enough; because, you remind me that I don’t have to prove that I have no needs. Save me, save our world from our desire to prove that we are like you.