In light of the healing that all of us need in order to work together to bind the wounds of a divided country, I thought these words from Hosea 10:12-13 — my personal “theme verses” — are appropriate. I present them here in reverse order; without the context before and after, they read a bit more smoothly as v. 13-12:
“But you have cultivated wickedness, reaped perversity, and eaten the fruit of falsehood. Sow for yourselves justice, reap the fruit of piety. Break up for yourselves a new field, for it is time to seek the LORD, ’til he comes and rains down justice upon you.” (NAB)
Other translations read “break up for yourselves your fallow ground . . . ” I pray that the fallow, unproductive, corrupt soil of contempt, bigotry, greed, and untruth will be broken up by the Gospel imperative of reconciliation and humility. May the Church take the lead in the replanting — and repent for its role in the laying waste of the American body politic.