On the Way to Wonder

Ruth 3:1, “One day Naomi her (Ruth’s) mother-in-law said to her, ‘My daughter, should I not try to find a home for you, where you will be provided for?’”  Naomi, the widowed wife in Chapter 1 who is overcome with grief at the death of her husband and two sons, who returns to Bethlehem bitter, and who in Chapter 2 passively gives Ruth permission to go out and glean in the harvest fields so they have food to eat, now takes an active role in caring for Ruth.  We cannot control contextual dramas like famine or perhaps election outcome or virus statistics.  We can take care of very basic needs like hunger through gleaning or food shelves or welfare but we as people have other emotional and even spiritual needs.  Naomi begins to wonder how she can help Ruth develop a “long term care plan.”  Food is for the moment but security is long term.  As we start Chapter 3 of Ruth, we start looking into the future.

         As Americans we hear about all the insurance policies we are encouraged to invest in for that day we hope will never come in the hospital or care facility.  We might even join groups that provide identity and community.  For youth that often means gangs but it can also mean church groups or other clubs where we can meet people and “network.”  Before we get into this chapter, let’s take a few minutes to think about our emotional, social, personal, or perhaps spiritual needs.  It seems to me that as we list needs, we can acknowledge how that need is met for example “I appreciate the love of my family.” Or that need might need a little tweeking, “I would like to start a conversation at the Y with that lady I always see.”  Lastly that need may need a repair plan, “I really need to call my sister and apologize for the rift and my part in it.”

         As I ponder a scriptural perspective on care plans, the sermon text for next Sunday, Matthew 25:31-45, comes to mind.  We will look at the return of Christ and the division of the sheep and goats.  People are arranged by care groups.  Those who reached out and became engaged with neighbors in need are put on one hand and those who did not care for others will be put on the other.  Interestingly neither realizes when they did or did not care.  Ponder, what are the basic security needs you have that need care and how can you help care for the needs of those in your life.  Blessings.  This is hard stuff.

“Be Still M Soul,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqKVFYD8Obc is my song for the end of chapter 2 of Ruth.  Life still is not easy for our main characters but a “care plan” has been initiated, gleaning to first meet Naomi and Ruth’s basic physical need, hunger.  Ruth asks to glean, to gather grain left by the side of the road or dropped by harvesters.  Hard work.   But….”as it turned out…”,  “just then….”  As Ruth patiently gleans, the events of her life are changing,

         Katharina von Schlegal wrote this hymn in German in 1752.  One hundred years later, it was translated into English by Jane L. Borthwick in Scotland and published in :Jymns from the Land of Luther Series 2”.  Jean Sibelius, a Finish composer wrote the tune that has stuck and blessed many.  Katharina von Schlegal was a product of the Pietistic Revival sweeping Europe, encouraging people to put emotions into song.  Jean Sibelius was a product of Finnish people seeking to finding voice  under the Russian Empire.  Germany, Scotland, Finland, are part of threads developing this hymn that has blessed many as they wait patiently in the midst of their trials on God.

Be still my soul the Lord is on thy side
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain
Leave to thy God to order and provide
In every change He faithful will remain
Be still my soul thy best, thy heavenly friend
Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end

Be still my soul when dearest friends depart
And all is darkened in the vale of tears
Then shalt thou better know His love His heart
Who comes to soothe thy sorrow and thy fears
Be still my soul the waves and winds shall know
His voice who ruled them while He dwelt below

Be still my soul the hour is hastening on
When we shall be forever with the Lord
When disappointment grief and fear are gone
Sorrow forgot love’s purest joys restored
Be still my soul when change and tears are past
All safe and blessed we shall meet at last

“You have given me comfort and have spoken kindly to me your servant – though I do not have the standing of one of your servant girls,” responds Ruth to Boaz’s invitation for her to continue gleaning in his field, safe and protected.  Ruth, a hungry widow “perchance” starts gleaning grain in the field of Boaz in ancient Israel.  She does not know that he is related to her late father-in-law.  He is kind to her.  Why?  What motivates us to kindness?

         Perhaps Boaz is a man of scripture and was raised being taught Proverbs 15:1, “A gentle answer turns away wrath but a harsh word stirs up anger.”  While the timeline may not suggest that, common courtesy may have been taught by his mother. I can hear my doubtful thoughts, “he’s just being polite.”

         Perhaps Boaz was being kind to butter Ruth up because she was beautiful and he had ulterior motives.  Women had little defense in those days and a foreigner gleaning probably had no one to run to.  Ruth acknowledges her helplessness and her appreciation. “Thank you”-s means a lot.

         Let me suggest another thought.  Boaz, we learn in the genealogy of Matthew 1:5 is the son of Salmon who married Rehab.  Rehab is one of the women mentioned in the genealogy of Jesus and was the woman who hid the spies checking out the Promised Land for Joshua.  Boaz’s mother was a foreigner!  How many times had Boaz heard his mother’s story was a child?  I suspect he had a soft spot in his heart for the plight of women coming into the Jewish story.

         Events in our lives may feel “random” and often we scratch our head and wonder why we had to go through a rough experience.  It is only later that we better understand the trajectory of our life.  As we are able to travel and care for others going through similar experiences, we gain perspective and can offer “gentle words,”  2 Corinthians 1:3-5 shares,

            ³ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father        of mercies and the God of all consolation, ⁴ who consoles us in all our          affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any          affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled   by God. ⁵ For just as the sufferings of Christ are abundant for us, so        also our consolation is abundant through Christ.

As you care for others in your life today, may you if faced with exhaustion,  find that gentle answer that turns away anger, and may you reach into the experiences that God has carried you through to find the compassion to reach out to another.  Blessings.  Life is not random!

            “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of    wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it   was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the      season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of   despair, we had everything before us, we …”

are the famous words introducing Tale of Two Cities.  Classic.  Many of us had to read the book as youth.  These words seem to describe so many situations and the plight of our hero Ruth in the book of Ruth.  A foreigner, reduced by hunger to gleaning in a stranger’s field, she is working hard to just stay alive and keep her mother-in-law fed too.  It was the worst of times for Ruth and Naomi.  But…  It was the best of times because “as it turned out she found herself” in the field of Boaz, a relative of Naomi’s husband.  “Just then” Boaz visits his field and the plot thickens.  Introductions are so important.  How do I present myself and how do others present me?

         I note that Boaz first talks to his foreman to check out what’s happening.  Reliable care-giving requires reliable research.  Aid work drilled water holes in the desert in northern Kenya because people were hungry.  Communities formed around the water, schools were started, families were divided as some followed the herds and some stayed with civilization, and one result was broken families and desertification.  To go to school children needed clothes so lines formed at my door asking me to makes shorts.  Then the lines for soap to wash the shorts.  Then lines to mend the shorts that fell in the fire!  There is a ripple effect to care-giving.  Boaz checks with his foreman.  The foreman affirms Ruth’s character as a hard worker.

         Boaz then approaches Ruth, “My daughter, listen…”  What an interesting opener.  How do we see those we help?  “My client,” “my patient,” “my husband,” or perhaps our heart sees them as “my burden, my responsibility, or my good deed.”  Boaz calls Ruth “daughter.”  He establishes his authority and seniority in an inclusive, gentle title, “daughter.”  He then goes on to put boundaries, clearly explaining how she can safely glean.  Care-giving relationships can easily get murky if expectations and boundaries are not clear.  Motives can come into question or even abuse result.

         Interestingly Ruth humbly accepts his offering agreeing that she is “a foreigner.”  There are many applications possible from this text as we too live our lives in the midst of “good times” and “bad times.” I ponder the titles we use to greet others or to describe ourselves.  Titles so easily divide, establish hierarchy and authority.  Perhaps a spiritual exercise today is to list the titles you call yourself that establish relationship with others and to list the parameters you place around a couple of those care-giving situations.  God calls me “beloved,”  We can sing today that chorus, “I’m my beloveds and he is mine, his banner over me is love.”

 “Random!”  “That was really random!”  Us oldsters might exclaim, “What a coincidence.”  “What are the odds?”  Yesterday as I was looking for the phone number of the lady I was going to drop some crocheted baby hats with, the phone rang and she called me at just that moment.  She had never called me before.  What ae the odds?  Years ago I allowed my arm to be twisted to attend a conference that cost $200 as I would receive a scholarship for half the cost.  I hung up and went to the mailbox and there was a check from an anonymous donor in our church across the country … for $200.  Experiences like that do not happen every day but when they do, we are taken by surprise. 

         Chapter 2 in Ruth phrases it as, “As it turned out, she found herself working in…”  Ruth, with Naomi’s blessing, heads out to “glean” for food.  For us that might mean going to the food pantry and just at that moment a load of something we needed arrives, meeting our need.  Someone hands us a coupon.  We find a $5 bill we had forgotten tucked away in our wallet.  Ruth, though, is going out to glean and is approaching a potentially dangerous situation.  Gleaning advertises the need the gleaner is living in and exposes her vulnerability as a female without someone to protect her.  Added to this she is a foreigner and perhaps sticks out in a crowd.  It is not known if Ruth recognizes this as the text records no warning by Naomi but as we read we learn just how vulnerable a position Ruth has put herself in.  Ruth, perchance, unbeknownst to herself, starts gleaning in the field of Boaz, the relative of her late father-in-law.  What are the odds???

         Ruth comes home at the end of the day and reports to Naomi about her adventures and now we see Naomi’s character in caring.  Ruth shares, “The name of the man I worked with today is Boaz, (2:19)” and Naomi replies, “The Lord bless him!  He has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead.  That man is our close relative, he is one of our kinsman redeemers. (2:20)”  Naomi who credited God’s hand in shaping the events of her life in Chapter 1, within whom Ruth  sees a person of faith worth following, now sees God’s hand in the randomness of life.  Naomi awakes from her depression and starts taking an active part in training Ruth.  Recognizing God-care in the midst of her caring challenges and need for self-care, gives our women the strength to carry on.

         Where do we “find ourselves” today as we care for others and ourselves?  Are our eyes open to see the God-care, the hand of God reaching in and directing us in the random events of our life?  Perhaps Naomi is at home praying for Ruth as she ventures forth that day, we don’t know.  Ruth did not even understand Boaz to be more than a kind man and the grain she gathered as blessing of hard work.  But part of caring for others is helping each other recognize the hand of God working, even as we struggle to persevere, and helping each other find hope in the midst of hunger.  Today, let us pray for eyes open to see in the randomness of life, the hand of God guiding, protecting, and supplying for us.  He is there even if unseen!  Blessings.

Have you ever “bottomed out,” reached “the end of your rope,” or “run out of steam?”  All those idioms picture us at the end of our internal resources and feeling like we cannot handle the present.  Care for others or even self-care is beyond our imagination.  Naomi has returned to Bethlehem embittered by her experience in Moab and grieving the death of her husband and sons.  Naomi seems to me emotionally flat.  The first verse of Chapter 2 tells us that Naomi did have a relative on her husband’s side, Boaz, but she seems too drained to reach out.  She has her faithful daughter-in-law, Ruth, but we do not see her exerting agency in that relationship either.  Rather Ruth comes to Naomi with the idea of gleaning, gathering the dropped grain behind the harvesters.  Naomi responds, “ Go ahead, my daughter.”

         Trauma drains us and dulls our caring ability.  Even simple tasks like dressing ourselves, cooking, or cleaning become a burden.  This is not just the aged that struggle but anyone caught in circumstantial famine may come to a point of personal physical crisis.  Perhaps the point to start with this week is that in caring for others, often we who are in a better place (not to be confused with having our act together) must reach out to the struggling.  We have social agencies like Meals on Wheels or visiting nurses but the proactive approach of a friend or family is light in darkness.

         Boaz, we find out, knows the plight of Naomi and is listening to the stories circulating but he has not reached out.  Ruth initiates the “care plan.”  Ruth suggests gleaning in the fields. 

         Perhaps the challenge and encouragement for us today is to check our “gas gauge.”  Are there areas in our life or the life of another that need to be cared for?  Perhaps I need to turn on some music that feeds my soul.  Perhaps I need to take a few minutes and start reading a book.  It may be as easy as picking up my phone and calling someone I haven’t spoken to for awhile or dropping a card in the mail.  We do not need to be experts to initiate a “care plan.”  Let me challenge us today that care can also mean reaching out to someone we know we need to heal a relationship with.  There may be someone who needs to hear our forgiveness.  Who can you hug today?  Caring for others involves reaching out, trying new tactics and venturing in the face of possible rejection.  As I think of initiating a care-plan, I reflect on John 3:16 as God’s care-plan for us, “For God so loved the world he gave his only son so that whoever believed might have eternal life.”  How comforting to know God sees, cares, and reaches out to us even when we are struggling.  Blessing, he journeys with us.

“What does your baby eat?  My baby hasn’t eaten for three days.  Help!”  So said a woman who stood at my door begging in a former famine relief camp in northern Kenya during my early missionary days.  My heart broke.  Her family was caught in the circumstantial crisis of famine but they were also experiencing the resulting physical crisis of hunger. Last week we pondered an ordinary family in chapter one of the book of Ruth.  Famine impacted Bethlehem so the father, caring for his family, moved them (that is his wife and two sons) to the neighboring country Moab, modern day Jordon.  After ten years the father and two sons have died and the wife, Naomi is left with two Moabite daughter-in-laws.  Naomi and Ruth return to Bethlehem while Orpah returns to her father’s house.  Chapter one ends with Naomi telling her friends, “Do not call me Naomi (pleasant) but Mara (bitter) because the Almighty has made my life very bitter.”  As we look over the events of last week some of us are rejoicing at the election results and some feel bitter.  Some rejoice at surviving corona but some feel bitter at their positive results.  Circumstantial crises impact the way we care for ourselves and those we love.

         Chapter 2 enter a new character in our story, Boaz, a relative of the deceased father.  Chapter 2 shifts from circumstantial crisis to physical crisis.  Naomi and Ruth are still widowed women at the mercy of “the system” and going to have to deal with their personal reality – hunger.  In Leviticus 19:9 and 23:22 we read, “When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest.  Leave them for the poor and for the foreigner residing among you.  I am the Lord your God.”  Gleaning “is the act of collecting leftover crops from farmers’ fields after they have been commercially harvested or on fields where it is not economically profitable to harvest.”  While I have never gleaned in this way, I have visited food pantries, used WIC stamps to get food for my children, accepted coats by Salvation Army for poor children at school, and even gone to the theater with other poor families gifted by the school system.  I think we call it “making ends meet.”  How do we “stretch the budget?”

         Perhaps this week you are not “stretched” but if we are honest, most of us are seeking to keep our spiritual, our physical, our emotional, our social, even our vocational lives balanced.  As we start chapter 2, let’s take a moment and ponder areas where we are “gleaning” food for the different arenas of our life.  Care-giving is not only an emotional commitment to another, it is also a process where we become involved in the nitty-gritty physical needs of self and others.  You may need two columns for areas where you are helping and areas where you need help.  Again I remember 1 Peter 5:7, “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”  Blessings.

“We are on the cusp…” announced CNN yesterday.  A presidential decision is soooo close and not quite yet. 

• Perhaps some of us like Elimelech in chapter one of the book of Ruth, have thought about fleeing to Canada, a neighboring country with similar language and heritage.  That is how we can best care for our loved ones.  Fleeing circumstantial danger may be a good option in political chaos, abuse, or severe temptation. 
• Returning to our roots, to something that might be more familiar as Naomi chose to do after the death of her husband and two sons in the foreign country ten years later, might promise a potential solution.  Yes, I have heard the young adult plea to come home until finances can be consolidated, a new beginning envisioned, and life kick started again.  Orpah chooses to return to her family.  Self-care is crucial.
• The last option we see in chapter one is the route Ruth chose. Freed to return home by Naomi, Ruth chooses to align herself with Naomi and Naomi’s God.  Without reading too much into this story, I suspect that Ruth’s decision was impacted not only by the circumstantial factors she could see in the fog as she stood at the point of decision but she reached inside herself to the core values she wanted to guide her life.

“We are on the cusp…” and like the people who lived in the book of Ruth, we have been impacted by circumstances beyond our control.  They did not choose famine or death of a loved one.  We do not choose when presidential elections will take place and cannot control the outcome.  We do not choose illness.  We do not choose Alzheimer’s.  We do not choose car accidents.  The circumstances surrounding our lives confront us with choices about caring for others and caring for ourselves.  It appears half our country will rejoice and half our country will grieve and the answer may not come quickly. 

         When I have had to dig deep inside myself to seek direction as I stand at the crossroads.  I search my soul asking what sort of person I want to become because of my choice.  I often remember 1 Peter 5:6-8, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.  Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.  Be alert and of sober mind.  Our enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”  May we choose a path that avoids violence and navigates care for our brothers and care for ourselves as we face the circumstances impacting us.  Blessings.

We seem to have come full circle by the end of chapter 1 of Ruth.  Famine initiated a coping strategy of moving.  Moving resulted in death of the father, marriage of the two sons to foreigners, the sons’ incumbent death and now a widow left with two daughter-in-laws.  This poor family has lived through tragedy after tragedy, many dark days requiring care for each other and self-care to survive.  Naomi decides to return to Bethlehem and Ruth decides to go with her.  Naomi appears to have gone “full circle” by returning but life has changed her.

         “Don’t call me Naomi (which means pleasant) she told them (the        women of Bethlehem who greeted her), ‘Call me Mara, because the          Almighty has made my life very bitter.  I went away full, but the Lord   has brought me back empty.  Why call me Naomi?  The Lord has  afflicted me, the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.”  Ruth 1:20,

         So many events in our lives feel beyond our control and we do the best we can to care for others and care for ourselves.  We still wait the results of the election.  Will it be a new start on the same ole care topics?  We still wait for a vaccine but will it really ward off death and protect our loved ones?  Cain cried in Genesis, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”  By being involved in what took place in his brother’s life, Cain was changed and murdered Abel.  By caring for our loved one with Alzheimer’s a person is changed as the person reflects at the death.  Care for a child differently challenged changes us.  Living next door to an immigrant and becoming friends changes us.  The “new normal” always is somehow familiar but actually different as we live into it.

         We have irony in this scene.  Naomi is meeting women from Bethlehem who recognize her.  “The whole town was stirred because of them.”  Naomi chose transparency.  She named the enemy and shared that she returned in grief, bitter, empty.  In the face of this confession, though, we have just heard Ruth’s plea to never be forced to leave Naomi for Ruth sees in Naomi a woman and a faith to model her life after.  Caring for others has a price for ourselves and others but it could be that in the midst of this feeling of exhaustion, we are not the best person to evaluate ourselves.

         Our second son at age four to five went through a year of high fevers and severe joint pain, diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.  He would cry out to me, “Mommy, am I going to die?”  I was exhausted and felt like a failure.  I may well have yelled at God, why was he making my life so difficult when I was trying to be a good servant, missionary.  It was a dark period.  I was pregnant with twins, big as a house, in a foreign country, scared.  We moved from the “bush,” leaving our translation project, closer to pediatric care in Nairobi.  Our son went into remission with the move.  But I was changed.  Care giving changes us.  Naomi renamed herself Mara.

         Today we might look at the blessings as well as the cost of care giving.  Naomi returns with Ruth who is devoted to her – a huge blessing as she starts over, but she returns “bitter.”  If you keep a journal, choose a care-giving person you are involved with and jot down the blessings you have experienced as well as the drains of the relationship.  Can you see the hand of God?  He is there and he cares!

Sacrifice thank offerings to God,

fulfill your vows to the Most High,

and call on me in the day of trouble;

I will deliver you, and you will honor me.

Psalm 50:14

Today we still stand pondering how our political and environmental (virus) future will unfold.  It feels a bit like Robert Frost in the poem about standing at the crossing of two paths in the woods and deciding which path to take.  Naomi, in the book of Ruth, an Israelite widowed and having lived through the death of her husband and both her sons, stands at a crossroad with her two Moabite daughter-in-laws.  They decide to return to Bethlehem where they have heard the Lord is blessing life. So they pack their bags and they’re ready to go.  Life in Moab will be difficult but return to Bethlehem has a cost.  I suspect Naomi now weighed the impact of the decision on the lives of her two daughter-in-laws.  She frees them to choose.

         As a young missionary family with five children, readying to return to Kenya, I read that children over age ten should be included in the discussion.  Our 8, 10, and 12 year olds were ready to go.  To our surprise we got static from our 6 year old twin boys.  They did not want to leave before having birthdays in the USA. Hmmm.  Would celebrating half birthdays with a party be ok? I asked.  We took them and their friends to Pharaoh’s Ice Cream parlor and celebrated.

         Naomi will be returning to a “new normal” but for Ruth and Orpah it would be a whole new world. Perhaps Naomi remembers the pain of adjusting when her family moved to Moab.  Perhaps Naomi worried about how three women with little status would cope.  In any case, Naomi frees the other two women from their social responsibility to care for and obey her.  Orpah cries and returns home.  Ruth however says the words we are so familiar with and which are often shared by brides at weddings, “Don’t urge me to leave you… Your people will be my people and your God my God.”  Ruth saw in the life and faith of Naomi, something worth following and trusting her life to.

         Today we possibly face a disappointing decision about president, possibly months of political wrangling, possibly changes in health benefits, possibly….  Heading to a new country where you are “the other” is no easier.  The contextual situation will be what it will be but we have control over our attitudes and where we caste our eyes and trust.  Ruth in the midst of her life has observed the faith of Naomi and casts her vote to stand with Naomi’s God.  That’s not quite the individualistic mountain top spiritual experience people share today but it points to the importance of community and faith in the midst of crisis.  We do not know what happened to Orpah or why she chose the “other road” and returned home to her family.  We can only pray that worked out well for her.  Ruth’s life, though, was forever changed by her choice “to take the road less traveled” and trust the God of Naomi.  As we wait by our radios, TVs, or cell phones today and listen for news about the issues that impact our life, may we also look to the God who says in Psalm 50:15, “call on me in the day of trouble, I will deliver you, and you will honor me.”  We are not alone.  Blessings.