Early Mondays with Coffee and Hosea

The southbound lanes of I-75 into Atlanta were moving well at 6:30 this morning. Good thing. It made the early trek to the church a little more bearable. What happens here from 7:00 - 8:00 a.m. is rather amazing when I think about it. There are seven other men who make the effort to get to the church, one of them gracious enough to regularly take charge of the cofee making duties, all for the purpose of reading . . . Hosea. We started Hosea about a month ago. Before that it was a full year through Romans.

Honestly, on Sunday nights I don't feel too eager about the early start on Monday. I don't relish the thought of Hosea at 7:00 a.m. Sundays are intense for pastors. I don't have regular pulpit duties, but of our four worship services I'm usually involved in two of them in addition to a teaching hour. I love all of it - and I love getting home when it's all done. Monday morning at 7:00 comes quickly. When it comes, I'm often wishing I didn't have to go.

Truth be told, I don't have to go. I'm not the teacher. We share the facilitating responsibilities, so I take my turn once every couple of months. This doesn't require extensive preparation. We simply show up and one of us gets things started as we read and talk through the text.

I don't have to go. Getting going is a challenge. But once I'm on 75 and the traffic is moving easily before standard Atlanta gridlock, and once I'm at the church with friends and coffee, I love being there. I love the company around the table, the laughter, the catching up. I love the fact that these men get up early too simply to gather around the word of God.

And I love Hosea. Well . . . I'm learning to love Hosea. Doug got us started this morning with a blunt confession: "I don't like Hosea." I think all of us were feeling a creeping sense of regret that we had chosen to spend time reading the minor prophets. But by the end of the hour, we knew that the voice behind this text was speaking to all of us - forcing us to look at the idolatries in our lives, the little gods of our own making, the salvation we're seeking through various alliances and attachments with employers and paychecks and achievement and stuff we can buy and people we know or groups we belong to. What will save us? What tells me I'm o.k.? Today we read 8:14 - "For Israel has forgotten his Maker and built palaces." That's the drift against which we must be constantly vigilant. We turn away from the one who made us. We turn toward what we can make. Timely words for the start of a work week.

So early Mondays with coffee and Hosea sounds like drudgery on Sunday night. But it isn't. Hosea also warned that God's people are being destroyed for lack of knowledge. They didn't know the law, didn't know their scriptures, didn't know God. So, once we've poured the coffee and turned our attention to the prophet, we wage war against that lack of knowledge. God speaks a living word, and breathes life into us.

We need that desperately, especially on Mondays.