I began tonight with Isaiah 5:1-2 and Hosea 11:1-4. In these passages, my Father reminded me of how good He has been to us all. Knowing how good He is, how can we not love Him? Yet, He showed me that because of our flawed nature we do. By reminding us of His love for us, He compensates for our flaw. Therefore, it is up to our wills to accept or reject Him.

Through Hosea 14, He showed me how He compensates through healing us when we fall and reminding us (winning back the bride) of the forgiveness that awaits us. He reminds us, too, of how we fail when we try to go it without Him. Only in Him is there true prosperity.

In Hosea 3:16-25, He told me of how He takes care of us when we return to Him, which should be an excellent inducement to the bride when she’s failing to make it on her own. This was how He won me back!

I had a problem with the passages from Ecclesiasticus. I knew the name had been changed in newer Bibles, but I couldn’t remember the new one. My Father was good to me, though. He led me to Sirach. From Sirach 45, 49, and 46:13, I came to realize how good our Father is to us in raising up the prophets and, today, priests, through which He leads us. I began to see them all as matchmakers, of a sort, within the context of winning back the bride. Their office is to reunite us with our Spouse.

Through this section, my Father showed me how He bends over backward for love of us, to draw us to the purpose for which He created us—to love Him and be loved by Him. At the same time, He showed me something else. Only God is perfect, but God cannot be created. Since we are creatures, we cannot be God. Therefore, we cannot be perfect. Our fall, then, was inevitable. However, He has compensated for this fault in our natures by giving us a wide variety of graces and gifts. If we avail ourselves of these, we can cover the multitude of our sins by love. Thus, we achieve, with His help, our purpose of loving and being loved. Since the process of “winning back the bride” is one of the graces He gives us, I feel ready to move on to the next section.