You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.( Matt 12:30).

God is good all the time. Loving

Loving God is something we must strive for as Christians daily. God tells us in the Bible to love him above everything and not decline his love or render the love and praise due him to idols.

In the first reading, Hosea tells the Israelites to return to the Lord and say no longer, 'Our god,' to the work of their hands. We easily get the  impression that idolatry is far from us, especially when we don't have idols made of trees and metals in our homes that we worship. 

However, if we consider our lives' preoccupations and concerns, we may find idols that must be hunted out and no longer kept in the altars of our hearts. Just as the face-covers we wear during the COVID-19 pandemic conceal our faces and make our recognition difficult, if we have idols in our lives, our true personalities become hidden unless we are willing to unmask them.

When the scribe tested Jesus concerning the greatest of all the commandments, Jesus answered with the word of God, not his own explanation of it . And that is so essential for us too; to know the word of god and use it to answer the nagging questions of life.

And when Jesus said to the scribe, "You are not far from the kingdom of God" what he was saying was “ You know the law, now go and practice it. And you are on your way to the kingdom.” The idea we pick up here is that our experience with God's word should lead to acts that are marked by complete love of God from our heart, soul, mind.

You see, we must also see confession as a helpful way to hunt out the idols in our lives so that we can serve God alone and sincerely. It is the  way we respond to Hosea’s appeal, “Take with you words, and return to the Lord; Say to him, “Forgive all iniquity.