How Can I Give You Up?

What we are willing to lose tells the truth about what we love. When two women stood before Solomon with one baby, the true mother was the one whose heart yearned for her son, willing to give him up rather than watch him die. Long before Solomon, God used a word from that same family to describe himself. In Exodus 34:6, “merciful” is the first thing God says after his name, before grace, before patience, before steadfast love. It is a word tied to the womb, to the bond between parent and child, and Scripture reserves it almost entirely for God.

Hosea 11 shows us what that compassion looks like. God remembers Israel like a father remembers teaching a child to walk, bending down to feed them, healing them while they wandered off and never noticed. By the law, a stubborn and rebellious son could be handed over to judgment, and Assyria was coming. God had every right. Yet mid-sentence the Father stops: “How can I give you up?” Israel deserved to be overthrown like Admah and Zeboiim; instead, God’s own heart is overthrown within him. Because he is holy, he will not destroy them. Every human love has a breaking point. His does not.

We need that word, because we are tempted to go numb. Our phones hand us the pain of the whole world each morning, and caring might cost us a Saturday, some money, or the center of our own story. Some of us are the ones who walked away and wonder whether God feels anything for us at all. Either way, gritting our teeth will not make us compassionate. Compassion grows only as we know we have received it.

In Jesus, God’s compassion walks into the crowd, and at the cross the Father who could not give up his people gave up his own Son for us. So we receive that mercy again, ask the Spirit for hearts that turn over as his does, and let our neighbors’ stories come close enough to move us.