Have you ever noticed how just the scent of something floating in the air can manifest a picture in your mind? You might be pushing through a mundane day and BAM! Maybe the scent of rubbing alcohol transports you back to a childhood bicycle crash, your mom cleaning your road-rash knee with a cotton ball. You feel the sharp stinging penetrating your skin as the cold alcohol vapors invade your nostrils. Your smashed bike lies victim to a daredevil stunt, handlebar streamers dancing in the wind.

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Nostalgia.

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I think this is where God was drawing the Israelites with his words in today’s passage. Back to a simpler time when they were his, cared for and loved by their dad. A time when they ran to him when they were in trouble, not dreading his presence because they knew they’d been disobedient. Through the prophet Hosea, God is showing this adulterous nation how far they are from the beautiful and prosperous life he’s always had planned for them, and really, it’s the life they wanted, too!

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God is painting simple pictures of familiar things the people would be well aquainted with, things like dew. In arid areas of our world, life depends on the morning dew; it can be the difference between life and death of some plants or the animals that depend on them. God is offering himself, the life-giving dew, during an unusually trying time for the nation. He’s inviting them into a time of replenishing, healing, and restoration with him. His dew will produce their holiness.

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God’s provision of dew can transform this withering nation into a cedar! When the nation is rooted, as when we are rooted, we are capable of drawing water from the source. The development of roots brings us into a whole different dynamic with God. We now have some stability, winds and storms are not blowing us over, we begin to learn how to “feed” ourselves. Did you know cedars have a root system that spreads underground beyond the diameter of its branches? The tap roots of a cedar can plummet 25 feet below the surface! Cedars can gather life from the source far below ground.

Take a moment and picture yourself this way – deeply spiritually rooted in Jesus, the giver of life. As beautiful as the lily in his eyes, a strong cedar for his work.  

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The lily and cedar were common in this area of the world, and as God brings these images to the mind of his people, he’s asking to be remembered, too. He’s asking his people to look back to a time when they lived obediently and lovingly with him. A time when he was free to bless them – he longs for that again. Whether they know it or not, his people long for it, too!

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God brings to mind the smells of prosperous times and a prosperous people, each a beautiful fragrance. It’s more nostalgia to help them see what it was once like, who they once were, and how it could be again. The fragrant, slow-growing olive tree spreads it’s branches, just as God’s people’s influence grows in their communities.  

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Each of these trees is also useful, not just pretty and pleasing to the senses. The cedars of Lebanon were used in the construction of King David’s palace and Solomon’s temple. Olives, of course, were used for food, the fruits themselves and their oil. The oil was also used in healing and other types of anointing; it was used for holy purposes.

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So, picture yourself again, an amazing aroma before the Lord – your inner being, your very heart for him, producing a fragrance that he delights in! Your beauty is like a lily. Your strength is harnessed by being connected to him. You are now a massive cedar: immoveable, purposeful, deeply rooted in righteousness! You possess provision for others' sustenance and healing oil.

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All from experiencing his dew.

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Allow yourself to languish in the dew of God. Let him restore and distill you in it.