Turn Out

She said to them, “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.  I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?” – Ruth 1:20-21

Naomi is usually said to mean pleasant or one who is pleasing, one in whom we delight.  Mara means bitter.  Is there anything more unpleasant than a bitter person?  When bitterness takes root it flowers into poisonous fruit which has the potential to “defile many” (Hebrews 12:15). 

We can understand Naomi’s position.  Her husband had taken her and her two sons into the land of Moab, abandoning their rightful inheritance near the town of Bethlehem because of famine.  Bethlehem means, ironically enough, “the house of bread”, but there was no bread so they left.  Naomi’s two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, after the death of her husband, Elimelech, married women of Moab.  Chilion’s wife was named Orpah, and we do not hear much about her.  She’s seems to have been a good enough person, sensible, pragmatic, and realistic.  She offered to follow her mother-in-law back to Judah but was dissuaded by Naomi’s quite reasonable arguments.

Ruth, on the other hand, has a book of the Bible named for her.  One of her descendants was King David, and when we read the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew, there, too, is the name of Ruth.  She is there because she refused to abandon her mother-in-law.  There was no Social Security, no homes for the aged, no pensions in those days.  An old woman without husband or children might have wished herself to soon depart this hard world.  Naomi could have expected difficulty in surviving apart from the kindness of a few relatives.  She would be a beggar, and a hopeless one.  Her hope for the future had been tied to children.  Hers were gone.  She would have no grandchildren or great-grandchildren.  Her line had failed.

But Ruth, whose name means friendly or loyal friend, goes out into the fields to glean, and her selflessness awakens the gracious nature of Naomi’s prosperous kinsman Boaz who sees to it that Ruth is able to provide for her mother-in-law abundantly.  Ruth’s attitude and love also inspire Naomi.  In seeking to find a way to repay and provide for her daughter-in-law, Naomi stops thinking about herself.

I don’t know about anyone else, but when I get bitter it is because I have become self-absorbed.  I have been treated unfairly, suffered injustice, loss, and defeat.  I always think of Tom Chaney’s line in True Grit after Mattie shoots him, “Everything happens to me. Now I'm shot by a child.”  I feel like that sometimes.  I have all the bad luck. 

It’s not true.  In fact, if there were such a thing as luck, I would have to say I have had extraordinarily good luck.  Naomi, too, had the good fortunate to have one of her sons marry a woman of superlative character and virtue.   Yet while Naomi focused on her own woes, wallowing in self-pity, the full force of this fact was lost on her.  As we were saying yesterday, Naomi comes to herself when she forgets herself and focuses on Ruth’s future.

This is the kingdom way.  If we put our energy and thought and effort into making other people happy, we will be happy.  Whoever has a bountiful eye will be blessed, for he shares his bread with the poor (Proverbs 22:9).   When we forgive, we find that we have been forgiven.  When we love, we may be surprised to find that we are loved.  When we liberate, we are set free.  When we make peace, we have peace.  And so it goes. 

If I find myself in bondage, in bitterness, joyless, miserable and hopeless, there’s a good chance that I have been too intent on getting my own way and pleasing myself.  The only way that can be fixed is if I am willing to turn away from my fleshly desires and work on making good things happen for those around me. 

There is, of course, one caveat.  You really can’t make anybody else happy.  There are people such that no matter how much you do or how hard you try to please them, they are never going to be pleased.  It’s never going to be good enough; it’s never going to be right or meet their standards or be what they want.  I’ve done it to the letter and had them tell me, “You know that’s not what I meant.”  There’s a tendency to give a two word response, but how they handle it is not my problem.  I just need to keep doing the right thing regardless of the response of others.    

Ode to an Easy Out

When I became embittered and my innermost being was wounded, I was a fool and didn't understand: I was an unthinking animal toward You. — Psalm 73:21-22

I've noticed that there are people who would seem to have every right to be angry with God yet are not. Then there are people like me who ought to be ashamed to complain yet frequently cry out against God in anger and frustration. Bitterness is a dangerous state of being. We are warned against allowing bitterness to take root in us (Hebrews 12:15). For this attitude has the power not just to put down roots in us but to blossom and go to seed. It can potentially "defile many". The writer said earlier in this same Psalm that if he had spoken his thoughts aloud, he would have betrayed God's people (verse 15). Bitterness is as invasive as it is destructive. To be bitter is to be sour on life. It corrodes our trust and turns us away from the transforming power of God's love for and acceptance of us.

My dad used to get wound up during "hay time". It was a big management challenge. Everything had to line up. The weather in our part of the country is never predictable, even these days, and putting up hay in good shape is very weather-dependent. The equipment had to be ready to roll; break-downs could be disastrous. On top of that, back before everyone was using big round bales, getting square bales out of the fields and into the barns required a good deal of manual labor and was thus dependent on the availability of hay hands.

My cousin lived a mile from us, and with his three sons and me, we could put together a pretty decent crew. We would put up hay at my Dad's place or my cousin's then move to the other farm. This particular year Dad had gotten his up first. He pulled the John Deere baler up to the house and got ready to service it before hitting the road to his nephew's. Dad was meticulous and thorough with his grease gun. He checked bolts and belts. Those old square balers were precise pieces of machinery. Everything had to be timed just right in order for the bales to be tied consistently and securely. There were little tempered steel "fingers" that caught the twine and pulled the knots tight. There were knives that cut the twine smoothly to set up for the next bale to be tied. Dad decided to take the knives off and touch them up. They were held in position by bolts that went down into threaded holes in the heavy gauge steel of the baler's chute.

One came off with no problem. The second one seemed tight. I offered to give the wrench a try. Dad replied, "No, you're liable to twist it off." He had barely gotten the words out of his mouth when there was an odd little sound and the wrench began to turn with sickening ease. The bolt head fell from the wrench with a slight clang against the spring steel and the jagged silver of the shaft stared up at us in leering brightness. Dad's reaction was completely understandable. He began to whale upon the baler with his wrench in a rapid, regular, if not rhythmic time. I think he was also speaking curses upon John Deere and that person's misformed progeny for many future generations, but the clanging tended to make his utterances less than intelligible, which was not necessarily a bad thing. It went on for quite some time like a synchronized stampede of belled cows or a coked-up speed metal drummer in a blacksmith shop.

As an aside, we tried drilling into the the shaft and extracting it with a spiral Easy Out. The Easy Out snapped, and the shaft of that thing was so hard the drill bit skidded off, so we laborious drilled around it with a very small bit and eventually punched everything out piece by piece.

All of us are overwhelmed at times by circumstances that catch us completely by surprise and block us from moving in our chosen or necessary direction. A flash of anger under those conditions is not terribly detrimental to us. When I spend good money on a piece of equipment, I have the reasonable expectation that it will perform as expected. If it breaks or fails or does not in some way live up to my expectations, it frustrates me. I have done all that I could to ensure success, but I have not achieved my goal. When we allow ourselves to experience frustration every day, however, we are on the path to bitterness.

Many of us set ourselves up for frustration by expecting breaks and benefits and advantages that never come. Especially here in America we are told that things ought to go our way. We should expect to have the best and be the best. The better among us understand that to mean that we can overcome every obstacle and meet any challenge. Many of us, though, are apt to think it means we won't encounter obstacles, that we won't suffer pain. When we do, more often than not, we start letting the failures wound us. Loss and defeat no longer merely sting the surface but penetrate to our "innermost being". If this happens once in a while, we can overcome and heal, perhaps; when it happens continually, the cumulative effect makes us hopeless and joyless.

Evidently the Psalmist did not own a dog or he would have never characterized his foolishness as making him an "unthinking animal". I have never met a bitter dog. I have met mean dogs and broken dogs but never a bitter dog. No dog thinks that the world owes it anything. Any tidbit of special food or kindness or attention is relished. Dogs are possibly the most consistently grateful creatures on the planet. Gratitude is the antidote for bitterness. Of all peoples who have ever lived from the dawn of humanity until now, we should be the most thankful. Need I say that we are not? We are spoiled; we are cynical, and we are bitter.

Spiritual disciplines are necessary for most of us — probably for all of us — if we are not going to be "conformed to this world" by the pressures and fears that surround us. There's no legalism in discipline. We are not performing to please or manipulate God but to refresh, exercise, and strengthen our spirit-man over the self. Practicing thankfulness is about as simple as it gets yet few disciplines are more beneficial.

Give thanks in everything, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus (1 Thessalonians 5:18)