LEAVING ROOM FOR GOD TO WORK: PART IV
Once upon a time, in a small village in India, there was a poor farmer who owed a large sum of money to the village moneylender. The time came for the debt to be paid, but the farmer did not have the money to pay it. Now the farmer had a beautiful daughter whom the moneylender fancied a great deal. Thus, he proposed a bargain with the farmer.
The moneylender said that he would forgive the farmer’s debt if the farmer would consent to let him marry his daughter. Both the farmer and the daughter were horrified by this proposal, so the moneylender suggested they let providence decide the matter. He would put a black pebble and a white pebble into an empty money bag. The girl would then pick one of the pebbles from the bag.
If she picked the black pebble, she would become the moneylender’s wife, and her father’s debt would be forgiven. If she picked the white pebble, she did not have to marry the moneylender, and her father’s debt would still be forgiven. If, however, she refused to pick a pebble at all, her father would be thrown into jail until he could pay off his debt. I’ve never under stood how a person could pay off their debt in prison, but I suppose that’s beside the point.
The three of them were standing on a pebble-strewn path in the farmer’s field. The moneylender bent over to pick up two pebbles. As he picked them up, the girl noticed that he had not picked up a white pebble and a black pebble. He had picked up two black pebbles and put them into the bag. He then asked the girl to pick a pebble from the bag.
What would you do if you were that girl? Now remember, this was a very different society than the society in which we live. The girl had very little say in the matter. Logical analysis of the situation produces three distinct alternatives: 1) The girl could simply refuse to take a pebble. 2) The girl could show that there were actually two black pebbles in the bag and expose the moneylender as a cheat. 3) The girl could pick a black pebble and sacrifice herself for the sake of her father.
What would you do if you were that girl? Here’s what she did. The girl reached into the bag and pulled out a pebble. Without letting anyone see what color it was, she let the pebble slip out of her hand and onto the pebble-strewn path. It was lost in the midst of a thousand other pebbles. “Oh, how clumsy of me,” she said. “No matter. If you look into the bag for the pebble that is still there, you will know immediately which pebble I chose.”
Since the remaining pebble was black, one had to assume that she picked the white one. And since the moneylender dared not admit his dishonesty, the girl was able to transform what had seemed to be an impossible situation into an advantageous one. This story is meant to illustrate the difference between what is called logical thinking and what is called lateral thinking. Logical thinking is essentially thinking in terms of obvious solutions, while lateral thinking is more like thinking outside the box.
For example, say you have two coins that total 30 cents. One of those coins is not a nickel. What are the coins? The answer is: a quarter and a nickel. ONE of the coins is not a nickel, while one of them obviously is. That’s what we call lateral thinking. It’s like thinking outside the box. The point I want to make with this story is this. Regardless of whether you think logically or laterally, perhaps things are never quite as bad as they seem. Again, perhaps things are never quite as bad as they seem.
Early on in the book of Ruth, however, you might have had a hard time convincing Naomi that things are never quite as bad as they seem. Naomi, her husband Elimelech, and their two sons Mahlon and Chilion, had migrated to the land of Moab when there was a famine in the land where they lived. Not long after that, Elimelech died. Mahlon and Chilion took Moabite wives, and shortly thereafter, Mahlon and Chilion died as well. Naomi was thus bereft of both her husband and her sons.
After this turn of events, Naomi decided to leave the land of Moab and return to her native Bethlehem. She urged her daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah, to stay in Moab and find new husbands. Orpah ultimately relented, but Ruth clung to her mother-in-law. Upon their arrival in Bethlehem, Naomi was quickly recognized. “Is this not Naomi?” her former friends and neighbors asked. To which Naomi replied, “Call me no longer Naomi,” which meant sweet or pleasant. “Call me Mara,” which, of course, meant bitter.”
Naomi wanted them to deem her bitter because she had gone away full and the Lord had brought her back empty. Her faith in God’s benevolence had been shattered. Her trust in the love of God had been crushed. Her hope in God’s mercy had been obliterated. While I can stand here and say, “Things are never quite as bad as they seem,” Naomi would have had a very different perspective. In her mind, things were every bit as bad as they seemed. She had lost her husband, she had lost her sons, she had lost her faith in God…and in the process, I suspect, she had even lost hope for the future.
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 at the time. After all, 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. Our hope in God might even provoke us to say, “I know things will be all right in the end. Since it doesn’t feel very good right now, this must not be the end.”
As we discussed several weeks ago, Ruth went to work to put food on the table for Naomi and herself. She gleaned in the fields of a wealthy farmer named Boaz. As it turned out, Boaz was a relative of Naomi’s. Because Boaz treated Ruth so well, Naomi came to realize that the hand of God had not gone out against her. Instead, the hand of God had gone before her to prepare the way. In other words, it was not a mere coincidence that Ruth landed in the field of Boaz. It was, instead, the providence of God. Naomi came to realize that there is nothing in life beyond the scope of God’s influence. She just had to leave a little room for God to work.
Yet this is where we encounter a profound question. Does God exist to serve us, or do we exist to serve God? As far as Naomi was concerned, should she simply sit back, let God work his magic, and reap the rewards of God’s omnipotent blessing? Or, getting an idea as to what God’s plan really was, should she take a leap of faith and do her part to help God’s plan take shape?
Naomi opted to spring into action. She formulated a plan whereby Ruth would make herself available to Boaz for marriage. For Ruth and Naomi, this was clearly a leap of faith. Of course, at this point, we might be inclined to ask, “Why doesn’t God lay out his plans more clearly?” It would make life so much easier, don’t you think? I think the reason God doesn’t lay out his plans more clearly is because God never seems to solve a problem for us that we can solve ourselves. Sometimes God just wants us to take a leap of faith. No one describes that leap of faith any better than William Sloane Coffin does in his book, Credo. He writes:
It is terribly important to realize that the leap of faith is not so much a leap of thought as of action. For while in many matters it is first we must see, then we will act, in matters of faith it is first we must do, then we will know; first we will be and then we will see. One must, in short, dare to act wholeheartedly without absolute certainty…I love the recklessness of faith. First you leap, then you grow wings.
First you leap, then you grow wings. That’s exactly what Ruth and Naomi did. Ruth made herself available to Boaz for marriage, and Boaz took the proverbial bait. But it wasn’t quite as simple as that. You see, according to ancient custom, there was someone else who was a closer relative who had, as it were, first rights of refusal. So Boaz met with the man, together with ten of the leading citizens of Bethlehem, to discuss the matter of Ruth. The man bowed out of the running, Boaz married Ruth, and the rest – as they say – is history.
The book of Ruth concludes with an extensive genealogy. Now this is the kind of thing that, when reading the Bible, we might be prone to skim or to skip over entirely. But in the book of Ruth, this particular genealogy is worth a closer look. You see, Ruth and Boaz had a son named Obed. Obed later had a son named Jesse, and Jesse later had a son named David. This is the very same David who ultimately became king over all of Israel. This is the very same David from whom Jesus Christ himself descended. We can logically conclude that had Ruth and Naomi not taken their leap of faith, David would have never been born. Their conviction to leave room for God to work clearly impacted the course of history. God uses seemingly insignificant pieces of the puzzle to accomplish significant things.
For example, have you ever heard of Edward Kimball? Edward Kimball was a young man from Boston who taught Sunday school at his church because he felt called by God to invest himself in the lives of teenagers. Then to get to know his students better, he would often visit them during the week where they lived or worked.
One Sunday morning, a particularly challenging teenage boy showed up in his class. The boy was seventeen years old, poorly educated, and prone to outbursts of anger and profanity. Edward Kimball thought long and hard about how he might reach this boy. One day, he decided to visit him at the shoe store where he worked for his uncle. Kimball passed by the store once or twice, trying to get up the courage to speak to him. What would he say, he wondered…and how would it be received?
Finally, he entered the store and found the boy in the back, wrapping shoes and putting them on the shelves. Kimball went to the boy and put his hand on his shoulder. He then mumbled a few words about Christ’s love for him. This marked the beginning of a relationship that would last for many years. The young man’s life was literally turned around. The young man’s name was Dwight L. Moody, and he became the most successful Christian evangelist of the nineteenth century. As Paul Harvey might put it, “Now you know the rest of the story.” But there’s more.
In 1879, Dwight L. Moody was instrumental in the conversion of another young man named F.B. Meyer, who also grew up to become a minister. Meyer subsequently mentored J.W. Chapman, who started an outreach ministry to professional baseball players. One of the players he recruited was Billy Sunday.
Billy Sunday became an evangelist himself. Some say he was the greatest Christian evangelist of the first two decades of the twentieth century in America. He brought a man named Mordecai Ham to Christ, who began holding evangelistic meetings in Charlotte, North Carolina. On one of the final nights, when Mordecai Ham was preaching, a gangly teenager came forward and responded to his call to “give your life to Christ.” That gangly teenager was a boy named Billy Graham.
Do you ever feel as if you have nothing to offer, or that you are a nobody when it comes to doing great things for God? Perhaps Edward Kimball felt the very same way. He never did anything spectacular or newsworthy. He just showed up – out of faithfulness to God – for an hour or two each week to teach the boys in his class. Yet he did take something of a leap of faith, didn’t he? He clearly left room for God to work. And God used that seemingly insignificant piece of the puzzle to accomplish some very significant things.
Nobody is a nobody. Each of us is a somebody. And God can use us, if we’re willing to take a leap of faith. The key, I think, has to do with leaving room for God to work. Amen.
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