My New Year’s resolution is to study the minor prophets, the often overlooked twelve books of the Hebrew Bible that many Protestant churches ignore. I chose them not only because they are seldom discussed in sermons, but also because they are shorter than the major prophets, making them easier to blog about.

As I started studying Hosea, I found that his time seems similar to ours.

• Politically turbulent era after a time of peace.
• A time when corruption and partisan intrigue were rampant.
• A time when foreign policy was unpredictable.
• It was a time rife with economic abuses where inequalities were exacerbated as the richer class exploited the peasants to pay their debts. They resorted to cheating and fraud in their exploitation.

I learned that many scholars think the book of Hosea was redacted by various authors who, as one commentator suggests, reinterpreted the prophet’s message for their time. This made me wonder what it would look like to do the same today. How can we use our theological imaginations to understand what the minor and possibly the major prophets have to say to us today?

This is the journey I’m preparing to embark on and if you’d like to join….follow along.