Sunday, December 15, 2013

Ruth 1:16,17 – “Influence”



As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

16And Ruth said, “Do not insist to me to leave you, to return from after you, because to where you go I will go and in where you remain I will remain. Your people my people, your God my God. 17Thus may the LORD do to me and thus may He add if death divides between me and between you.”

In the last post, I said I can’t move on without pausing to consider Ruth’s famous words. Before I move on, there is another thing I think worth noting. The book of Ruth teaches us much about the subject of influence. Influence? What do I mean?

All of us want to “make a difference.” We’d all like to believe, as we passed through this Valley of Bacah, that we actually did do something to make this world a better place, or at least helped someone in it, or that we left behind some qualities or knowledge that someone after us could embrace. It might be as simple as a knot I knew how to tie that I thought was often very useful or perhaps a family recipe. Or it might be knowledge of a trade that we wish to pass on to our children or other young people. Of course, as believers we would like to believe that, because of us, other people would come to know the Lord and love Him.

I think it safe to say most of us would say we don’t have much influence at all. If someone stumbles across this blog, is that pretty much how you feel? I suspect it’s true of most of us. Few people get to be the Billy Graham’s or the Mother Theresa’s or the Nelson Mandela’s of this world, who, even in their lifetimes, can look and see a very wide swath of positive influence. In spite of our desire to “make a difference” it just doesn’t seem like anything we do is that important. I generally make it a point to vote in every election and I do believe that our votes “count” but my voting feels about as influential as the rest of my life – the proverbial “teacup in a tempest”. Most of us pretty much live our lives finding that no one seems to notice or care what we think, and our contributions everywhere are about as momentous as our votes.

So, what to make of this? We want to “make a difference,” but we honestly don’t see the opportunity or even the likely possibility.

I think we could learn much from the book of Ruth and especially be encouraged because the people we meet there are not emperors or great evangelists or any other such thing. They’re just common people like us, living their lives just like we do.

First of all, consider Naomi. What is her “position?” Wife, mother, mother-in-law. Pretty impressive, yes? Actually, as the young people say, “Not so much.” Naomi is one of “us.” She’s one of us people who find that just living seems to take up pretty much all of “me.” She has no audience, no microphone, no stage to shout from, just a life to live. She would have no doubt felt just like the rest of us – pretty useless in the big scheme of things.

But enter the Lord. There is one thing monumentally significant about Naomi – she is a believer. She knows the Lord. Even in her bitterness, she sees everything in her life in connection with the Lord. “When she heard that the Lord had come to the aid of His people …” “May the Lord show kindness to you …” “May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband …” “The Lord’s hand has gone out against me …” When Ruth came home with an abundance of barley and says it was from a man named Boaz, Naomi’s first response is, “The Lord bless him!” Everywhere Naomi goes, the Lord goes with her. She is weak, but He is strong. She may be “just” a wife and mother and mother-in-law, but the God of the universe dwells with her.

As she has been living her life, going with her husband to live in Moab, being a mother to two boys, cleaning the cobwebs out of the corners, something else happens. One day her now adult son Mahlon brings home a cute girl and suddenly Naomi has a daughter-in-law. At this point, I’m going to conjecture, but I think what I would offer is reasonable. Ruth is a Moabite. Moabites were of course the descendants of Lot’s incestuous relationship with his daughter. The Moabite people had long since forgotten anything they ever knew about the true God. They worshipped a particularly noxious pagan god they called Chemosh. Chemosh was worshipped for one thing by child-sacrifice. Think for just a minute how that one practice would affect an entire culture. Children grew up in a world where they could not trust their parents! It would be seriously a “dog-eat-dog” world of suspicion and cruelty, a world where, from the very beginning, life was cheap and other people – even your own family – were someone you used for whatever it took to “get by.” That’s the world Ruth grew up in – a cold, cruel world where even your own mother’s embrace was not to be trusted.

Enter Naomi. Ruth probably noticed immediately there was something different about this Mahlon fellow. Yes, he was definitely cute, but, more than that, he didn’t treat her like the Moabite boys. Somehow there was a kindness about him she’d never known, a gentleness. Even as she observed him and as he talked to her, she sensed that somehow she could “trust” him – something she’d never known in her world. Then he takes her home and she finds out there’s four of them!

Right away, she sees something totally different in this home. The people love each other. The parents don’t burn their children, they love them. The very fabric of this family’s world is built on the precepts of a God who loves them, who gives them commands “that it may go well with them.” And suddenly she finds in Naomi the mother she never had. Like Mahlon, Naomi doesn’t “want” anything. She just loves Ruth. She’s kind to her, embraces her as her son’s wife, is patient to explain things to her, and soon Ruth finds she actually “trusts” her. Ruth says to herself, “I want to be a part of this ‘people.’” Then she begins to realize it isn’t just the “people.” It isn’t just that this family somehow got lucky. It is their God. As she hears Naomi attribute everything to “the Lord” Ruth begins to see that this family’s God is what makes them different. And it is a “different” she wants.

Naomi doesn’t “feel” like she’s having any influence. She’s just a wife, and a mother, and now a mother-in-law, doing what people like her do. Yet, when it comes time to return to Israel, there is this Moabite girl who plasters herself with super-glue, gives Naomi a big hug and says, “I’m going with you.”

And she isn’t just “going with her.” She makes it clear, “Your God will be my God.” As Naomi lived her faith, even lived it imperfectly, the Lord has used her to win the heart of this one Moabite girl. Is that influence? Yes! In her day someone might of said, “Yeah, but that isn’t much.” I’m reminded of the boy who was walking along a beach and came to a large accumulation of starfish that had washed up on the shore to lay there in the hot sun and die. He grabbed up one and tossed it back in the ocean to save it. Someone mocked, “What difference did that make?” “It made a lot of difference to that one,” he replied.

So was Naomi’s effect on Ruth important? It certainly was to Ruth! Naomi is no Mother Theresa. If it weren’t for the Bible, no one would even know it happened. It would seem like my single “vote.” Yet was it influence? Yes. And was it important? Yes.

And of course, we know “the rest of the story.” Little could Naomi possibly imagine that the Lord would use her, through this Ruth, to lift the entire Jewish nation out of the horrific period of the Judges and into the kingdoms of David and Solomon.

There is a Ruth to utter her immortal words and to sire a king, because there was first a Naomi – just a wife and mother and mother-in-law, going about her daily life, but living her faith.

Like us, Naomi had little to offer. But like Ruth, she gave to the Lord the most important gift – herself. And He took her five loaves and three fishes, blessed them and broke them, and used her in what would prove to be a monumental way.

E. Biscombe said,

“The Bible affirms that no man liveth to himself. Each life has an influence. What is influence? It is that subtle something which resides in our deeds, words, spirit, and character. It is a shadow of ourselves, our impersonal self. It is to us relatively what the fragrance is to the flowers, what light is to the star. We are all sensitive to influence: our hearts are open to goodness, beauty, genius. There is never a day when perhaps unconsciously we do not receive and reflect a thousand shadowy forms.”

Dr. Thomas L. Constable said:

First, God uses people who trust Him, and commit themselves to Him, to be a blessing to others. Boaz and Ruth probably did not live to see David's greatness, much less Jesus Christ's. However, God found in them people whom He could use to produce a David. Modern society is very ‘results conscious.’ We want instant success, and we grow impatient when we do not see God using us to bless others. We need to remember that we will not see all the fruit of our faith this side of heaven. G. Campbell Morgan wrote, ‘You may be God's foothold for things of which you cannot dream.’"

May we all be encouraged today to be content just to “be.”  Be who you are. “Remain in the place of your calling.” Naomi and Ruth would teach us, once again, that “little is much if God is in it.” Let us all resolve the more to simply walk with our God, to love Him and the people He puts around us. And as we go through our mundane lives, let us believe that love really will somehow, some way grant to us the influence we wish we could have. Love will make a difference – whether we ever see it or not.



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