LEAVING ROOM FOR GOD TO WORK: PART I
Dr. Lehman Strauss was an Old Testament professor at place called the Philadelphia Bible Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania a good many years ago. Then from 1939 until 1957 he served as the senior minister at the Calvary Baptist Church in Bristol, Pennsylvania. As pastor of a very large church, he performed a lot of weddings and did a great deal of premarital counseling. Case in point, Dr. Strauss spoke of a time when a young woman came to him and asked if he would marry her and her fiancé. He met with the couple and after spending a couple of hours with them, he said that he just couldn’t – in good conscience – perform their marriage ceremony. He had some sincere questions about the character of the young man she wanted to marry.
The young woman was angry with Dr. Strauss. She quit going to his church and eventually found another one to attend. Before long, she approached the minister of her new church and asked if he would marry her and her fiancé. That minister agreed, and it wasn’t long before the woman and her fiancé were married. Three years later, this very same woman went back to see Dr. Lehman Strauss. She said, “I have a problem. I am in the process of getting a divorce.” Then she added, “My problem is, I just can’t understand why God let me get into this mess!”
Did God really let her get into that mess, or did she manage to get into it on her own? Dr. Strauss had tried to save her the heartache, but she just wouldn’t listen. The question now, I suppose, is this: “Where do we draw the line between what is God’s responsibility and what is our responsibility?” In other words, when are the predicaments in which we find ourselves God’s fault, and when are they our own?
Let’s take a look at the passages we read from the book of Ruth a moment ago. Yet before we get to the question at hand, I need to take a little time to set the scene for you. The era in which the events of our passage took place was what we call the period of the judges. This is after Joshua led the Hebrew people into the Promised Land, yet before Saul or David were anointed as kings.
There was a man of Bethlehem named Elimelech. The name “Elimelech,” by the way, means, “my God is King.” The name “Bethlehem” means “house of bread,” but in spite of that it seems there was a famine in the land. Thus, Elimelech took his wife and his two sons to live in the land of Moab. Now to a Hebrew audience some 3000 years ago this was not a good thing. Moab was considered to be a God-forsaken place. The 19th chapter of the book of Genesis explains why.
A man named Lot was the nephew of Abraham. He lived in a town called Sodom. An angel of the Lord told Lot to flee from Sodom, for God was going to destroy both Sodom and Gomorrah with fire and brimstone. You probably know the story. In any case, after Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt, Lot was left with his two daughters. Lot was afraid to settle in another city – perhaps with good reason – so he and his daughters lived in a cave in the wilderness.
To make a long and somewhat sordid story short, Lot’s daughters got him drunk with wine and had an incestuous relationship with him. Ah, sometimes the Bible reads like a cheap Harlequin romance novel, doesn’t it? Both of his daughters conceived and one of them had a son named Moab, and the land of Moab – just across the Dead Sea from Judah – was named after him. Thus, good Hebrew people everywhere came to look with disdain upon Moab – and upon Moabites – because their origins were conceived in utter sin. Are you with me so far?
Elimelech took his wife and two sons from Bethlehem to Moab because there was a famine in the land. Elimelech’s wife was named Naomi, which means “sweet” or “pleasant.” Their sons were named Mahlon and Chilion. The name “Chilion” means “sickly” and the name “Mahlon” means “wasting away.” Some names, huh? That would be like us naming our kids “cancer” or “tuberculosis” or “cirrhosis of the liver.” I think the names of these people are indicative of the fact that there’s more to this story than meets the eye.
In any case, Elimelech and Naomi lived in Moab with their boys, and then Elimelech died. Obviously, this made life hard for Naomi, so she tried to make the best of a difficult situation. Each of her sons took Moabite wives. Mahlon married a woman named Ruth, and Chilion married a woman named Orpah. (That’s “Orpah,” not “Oprah.” Oprah is somebody else.) Interestingly enough, the name “Ruth” means “friendship,” and the name “Orpah” means “stubborn.” Perhaps there’s a hidden meaning in those names as well.
Well, as luck would have it, Mahlon and Chilion lived up to their names. Mahlon, whose name meant “wasting away,” and Chilion, whose name meant “sickly,” both died as well. Naomi was thus bereft of her husband and her sons. When she heard that the famine in Bethlehem was over, she decided to go back home. Ruth and Orpah both – at first – started to go with her.
After traveling a very short distance, however, Naomi had a change of heart. She urged both Ruth and Orpah to return to Moab. “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s house,” she said. “May the Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. The Lord grant that you may find security, each of you, in the house of your husband.”
It was a very different time and place back then. A woman without a husband had no power, few rights, and unscrupulous businessmen could easily take advantage of her. Widows and orphans were often considered the most vulnerable people in society 3000 years ago. Naomi only wanted what was best for her daughters-in-law. She wanted them to live productive and fruitful lives with new husbands of their own. As for herself, Naomi was willing to live with her curse. She had lost her husband and her two sons. As she put it herself, “My daughters, it has been far more bitter for me than for you, because the hand of the Lord has turned against me.”
“The hand of the Lord has turned against me,” Naomi said. “The hand of the Lord has turned against me.” Think about what that means. Naomi truly believed that God was working against her. It was God who had made her life miserable. It was God who was responsible for everything that had transpired. In the mind of Naomi, God was the one who was solely to blame.
I think that brings us back to the questions we considered at the beginning of this sermon. Where do we draw the line between what is God’s responsibility and what is our responsibility? Or, when are the predicaments in which we find ourselves God’s fault, and when are they our own?
Naomi had good reason to blame God for her predicament. You could make a pretty good argument that what happened to her was God’s responsibility, and that the situation in which she found herself was, in fact, God’s fault. I mean, if we truly believe that God is sovereign – that God is all powerful, all knowing, and present everywhere – then don’t we necessarily have to believe that God could have prevented what transpired? Yet on the other hand, is it not also possible that God was preparing a situation for Naomi that she could not have envisioned? Is it possible that everything that transpired in her life was necessary for God’s ultimate plan to come to fruition? We’ll talk more about that next week, but for now, I think we need to consider the issue of faith.
Naomi was bitter. She truly believed she had suffered unmercifully at the very hand of God. Her faith in God remained intact. There is no question here as to whether or not she continued to believe in God. The question is, what did she believe about God? Her faith in God’s benevolence had been shattered. Her faith in the love of God had been crushed. Her faith in God’s mercy had been obliterated. Dire circumstances have a tendency to bring that out in us. When things don’t go our way, we tend to blame God, and raise questions about God’s character. It’s times like these when we can lose the most precious thing of all. We can lose hope.
Ladies and gentlemen, hope is a choice. Hope is always a choice. Ideally, we choose to believe that life isn’t over in spite of how dire things might look. After all, there are certain things that simply cannot be done until God shows up. Again, there are certain things that simply cannot be done until God shows up. Thus, perhaps the real definition of faith has to do with leaving room for God to work. Write that down. Perhaps the real definition of faith has to do with leaving room for God to work.
Robert Dykstra was a minister in Saddle Brook, New Jersey. To his utter shock and dismay, his wife of 30 years – Yvonne was her name – took her own life. In a book entitled, She Never Said Goodbye, he discusses the horrendous trials he endured in the aftermath. Listen to how he describes his grief:
Death defies our deepest spiritual imagery. The promise of a future heavenly home takes a back seat to the harsh, present homesickness. I can’t talk or think about heaven until I’ve dealt firmly and courageously with the finality of her physical death…She is gone, and nothing can bring her back to me, and spiritual language gives me no answers. It only leaves me longing.
Did you catch that last part? Spiritual language gave him no answers. It only left him longing. That’s where he was in the early stages of his grief. But he didn’t quit the ministry, he didn’t abandon life, and he didn’t give up on God. Perhaps we could even say that in faith, he left room for God to work. In time, this is what Robert Dykstra came to say:
The grave, silent and cold, not the fiery, red-hot images of Armageddon, carries me into the last age – the final day – the single tomorrow of the conquering Christ. The victorious death and resurrection of the Son of Man alone frees me to live in the face of death, to accept her dying – and my own – as a purely natural consequence of living. It calls me to till my garden of memories and dreams. Where once the rising eastern sun cast its long, dreadful shadow across the face of Paradise, it now signals a bright, undying hope.
Try as we might, we just can’t understand it all. There is more to life – there is more to death – than meets the eye. Only God knows how it all comes out. Only God knows what’s in store. We just have to be faithful, and leave room for God to work. Perhaps no one in history has put it any better than the anonymous author of a poem called, The Weaver. Listen closely to the words.
My life is but a weaving
Between my Lord and me.
I cannot choose the colors
He works so steadily.
Oft times he weaves in sorrow
And I, in foolish pride,
Forget he sees the upper,
And I the underside.
The dark threads are as needed
In the Weaver’s skillful hand,
As the threads of gold and silver
In the pattern he has planned.
Not ‘til the loom is silent
And shuttles cease to fly,
Will God unroll the canvas
And explain the reason why.
Ladies and gentlemen, some things just can’t be done until God shows up. Faith…is leaving room for God to work. Leave room for God to work. And it the process, you just might find your own hope being restored…regardless of what you’re going through at the moment. Amen.
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