Scripture Introduction
One old commentator wrote about our text: “Names are given to men and women, not only to distinguish them from each other, but also,—1. To stir them up to verify the meanings… of their names. Wherefore let every Obadiah strive to be a “servant of God,” every Nathaniel to be “a gift of God,” every Robert “famous for counsel.” 2. To incite them to imitate the virtues of those worthy persons who formerly have been bearers… of their names. Let all Abrahams be faithful, Isaacs quiet, Jacobs painful, Josephs chaste; Lewis, pious…. Let them also carefully avoid those sins for which the bearers of the names stand branded to posterity. Let every Jonah beware of stubborn disobedience and Thomas of distrustfulness. If there be two of our names, one exceedingly good, the other notoriously evil, let us decline the vices of the one, and practice the virtues of the other. Let every Judas not follow Judas Iscariot, who betrayed our Savior, but Judas the brother of James, the writer of the General Epistle….
“In the days of Queen Elizabeth, there was a royal ship called “The Revenge,” which, having maintained a long fight against a fleet of Spaniards (wherein eight hundred great shot were discharged against her), was at last fain to yield; but no sooner were her men gone out of her, and two hundred fresh Spaniards come into her, but she suddenly sunk them and herself; and so “The Revenge” was revenged. Shall lifeless pieces of wood answer the names which men impose upon them, and shall not reasonable souls do the same?”
Few of us set the same value to names, but I did look up some of your names on the internet:
• Amy: from the Old French meaning “beloved.”
• Sarah: means “lady” or “princess” in Hebrew.
• George: From the Greek for “farmer, earthworker.”
• Stanley: is Old English for “stone clearing.”
• Helen and Elena: from either the Greek “torch,” or “moon.”
• Ken: Irish: handsome
• Gwendolyn: means “white ring,” in Welsh.
• Maury: French: dark skinned.
In our study we meet Naomi, which means, pleasant. In English, probably “Felicia,” or “Felicity,” have similar meanings. But after the troubles Naomi endures, she prefers to be called, bitter. Let’s read her story and see what God would teach us about the power and love that does not always do what we want.
[Read Ruth 1.1-22. Pray.]
Introduction
Life in a small village offered rare moments of excitement and interest. Two visitors leading a donkey with a small load of belongings, wearily trudging the dirt path, grabbed attention long before they reached the village. Harvesters in fields far from town back with the news that created quite a stir.
“Look – travelers! Who could they be? They seem worn and dirty – they must have come from far. Look! They are small and fair – women traveling alone. Strange.”
Whisperings or the arrival create a crowd of gawking women ready to pry into the reasons for this unexpected visit. “The whole town was stirred because of them.”
As they draw close, curiosity gives way to shock when someone recognizes Naomi. “Is this Naomi? It has been years, yes; but she looks like it has been decades.”
When the two dusty figures finally reach town, one from the crowd of women dares ask the questions all want answered: “Is that you, Naomi? Where have you been? What has happened? Where are your husband and sons? Who is this foreigner who travels with you in such sad condition?
She responds: “Naomi? Pleasant? Do I look pleasant to you? Naomi? Call me, “Bitter,” “Mara,” like the maror we eat at Passover, the bitter herbs, for God’s ways leave a bitter taste in my mouth. He is Shaddai, the Mighty One; no one stays his hand; no one can say to him, “What have you done?” But his hand has come down harshly on me. I went away full – husband, sons, happy. I return empty – broken, angry, bitter. Why call me ‘Pleasant’ when Jehovah has brought calamity on me?”
So what do we say to a “Naomi” who visits our church? Better, what about Felicia that you work with, the young lady who is lonely and afraid and feels abandoned by God?
Jean-Pierre de Caussade, who wrote about the struggles of faith in dark nights of the soul, said: “Everything helps me to God.” That was his way of agreeing with Romans 8.28: “for those who love God all things work together for good.”
Larry Crabb (Shattered Dreams, 77): “If we are to find hope when everything we’ve lived for is taken away, if we are to move on with peace and purpose when our hearts are broken by indescribable pain, or when they quietly ache with regret and missed opportunity, we must rescue Paul’s teaching and de Caussade’s restatement from their usual status as clichés. ‘All things work together for good’ and ‘Everything helps me to God’ must no longer be regarded as Biblical mantras for pious folks to utter when they want to deaden pain.”
How do we help our friends (or ourselves) move toward God when moving hurts? Naomi is depressed and angry with God, convinced that she is a victim of uncaring sovereignty. These are the people we usually avoid; no one invites Naomi to their small group.
But she comes to you for counsel. What do you say to the one who complains that the Almighty used his power to bring calamity?
You probably know the name Ted Turner, founder of CNN and owner for a time of the Atlanta Braves. He has several television stations, and is one of the most influential and wealthy atheists in the world.
Rod Dreher wrote an article about Turner in National Review a couple of years ago. He noted that few people in American public life are as “openly hostile to Christianity as media mogul Ted Turner.” You may remember that Turner once said, “Christianity is a religion for losers,” and once “joked” that the pope should step on a landmine.
But did you know that Turner was deeply religious as a boy despite his father’s emotional abuse? He intended to become a missionary. But when he was a teenager, his younger sister Mary Jane contracted a form of lupus, and suffered terribly before dying a short while later. All his prayers for her recovery — an hour a day, he said — were for naught. “She used to run around in pain, begging God to let her die,” he recalled. “My family broke apart. I thought, ‘How could God let my sister suffer so much?’”
Sounds like Naomi and shattered dreams.
Rod Dreher concludes his article: “I’d thought about Turner on the train ride back to New York. Why does God permit evil, including allowing the innocent to suffer…? Turner had seen his beloved sister linger in extreme pain before she died young, his prayers for her unavailing…. How do any religious believers who have never been tested as severely know that we would fare any better than Ted Turner has?”
How would we counsel a teenage Ted Turner? I’m not saying that the right answer would have fixed him, but God tells us to be always prepared to make a defense (with gentleness and respect) to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you (1Peter 3.15). I cannot imagine a much greater need for hope that a teen in Turner’s situation.
Larry Crabb (Shattered Dreams, 33): “Somehow we must find a hope that continues through shattered dreams, a hope… available to everyone regardless of their circumstances…. We must discover a hope that thrives when dreams shatter, when sickness advances and poverty worsens and loneliness deepens and obscurity continues, the same hope that anchors us to God when dreams do come true.”
Let me offer three things to consider from Naomi’s experience, then six lessons to think about in the coming weeks.
1. Lessons From Naomi’s Life
1.1. Grief is natural and blameless
Naomi accurately describes her life as going away full and returning empty. She has lost her youth, wealth, and (to some extent) health; more importantly, her husband and sons lie buried under the dust of Moab. True faith does not deliver from trial and trouble in this life. God cannot be trusted to give you health and wealth.
Jesus was the perfect man, sinless and fully filled with the Spirit. Yet he suffered and wept, grieved and sorrowed. “Now is my soul troubled,” Jesus said, when explaining to his disciples that he must walk to the cross.
Those who follow Jesus must also travel this path. He promised that in this world we will have trouble. Naomi was right to feel the distress and grief of her hard life.
1.2. God controls all things
In our church tradition we say that “God’s works of providence are his completely holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing every creature and every action.” That is a technical statement of a simple Biblical truth: God controls all things.
Psalm 115.3: Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.
Isaiah 45.7: I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the LORD, who does all these things.
Matthew 10.29: Not one sparrow falls to the ground apart from your Father.
Naomi sticks with Biblical theology in tough times. Twice she uses the name Shaddai for the Lord, and four times she attributes her test to God’s hand. God is immanent as well as transcendent; he is involved in our daily affairs though outside and above all that is created. God controls all things.
1.3. God Gives Better Hope Through Broken Dreams
Naomi has not arrived yet at this point, though she will. Now she can only say, “The Lord has testified against me.” People need time to grieve and even be angry with God and his ways.
Still, God has work to do on Naomi. Right now, she imagines that since God permits her problems, he must not feel love and favor toward her. But there she errs. Hebrews 12.6: The Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.
The tradition about Gautama Siddhartha is that he was the son of a wealthy king who lived a few centuries before Christ. His father wanted to shield him from everything ugly. But the young prince wanted to see the world and finally escaped the castle. There he found four distressing sights that unnerved him: a sick man, an old man, a dead man, and a seeking man who wanted to understand suffering. The sights so troubled him that he made it his life’s mission to discover the solution to suffering.
After much time and thought sitting under a sacred tree, Gautama rose and announced, “I am Buddha,” and here are the “four noble truths”:
1) Life is suffering.
2) The cause of suffering is desire.
3) The way to end suffering is to end desire.
4) Life should be spent eliminating desire.
Jesus has a different answer. Do not deaden desire, but allow your suffering to stir in you a deeper one, a desire that is truer and more satisfying than any other, the desire to know God. Then your hearts will not be troubled even when troubles come, because Christ has overcome the world and gives his people the true experience of God.
Here, then, are Larry Crabb’s six lessons:
2. Six Lessons of Shattered Dreams
2.1. Shattered Dreams are Necessary for Spiritual Growth
When we set our heart and hopes on lower goods, when our highest dreams are earth-bound rewards, these idols deprive us of a soul-satisfying experience of God. We cannot grow closer to God when all we want is a newer car or handsome husband. Dreams that grip our hearts must be shattered for our hearts to be gripped by the possibility of the glory of God.
2.2. Something wonderful can survive everything terrible
Shattered dreams hurt, and we may feel we cannot survive. In a sense, we will not – suffering changes us, and not always for the better. Grief is natural and blameless, and part of the process of discovering a better dream than the ones we cherished, the dream of a deeper experience of God.
2.3. Some dreams important to us will shatter, and the realization that God could have fulfilled that dream pushes us into a terrible battle with him
No one escapes life unscathed. Whether you believe (as Naomi and I do) that God causes our trials, or (if you want to protect God from such a charge) you believe that God only allows trouble, the Bible insists that God can prevent calamity. He can make our days better, but does not always do so. That creates a crisis of faith, a conflict with God.
John Piper correctly notes, “All experiences of suffering… threaten our faith in the goodness of God and tempt us to leave the path of obedience” (Desiring God, 257).
2.4. Only an experience of deep pain develops our capacity for recognizing and enjoying true life
Much to my daughter’s dismay, on Friday night Helen said that she would rather have the homemade pumpkin soup we were enjoying than a Krispy Kreme Doughnut. I feel the same way about the Brussels Sprouts recipe we make. The capacity to enjoy tastes which are complex and nuanced never develops from a diet of French fries and soda pop. The palate must be exercised and trained in the “harder” tastes to learn to appreciate their greater delights.
Similarly, we neither envision nor pursue greater and deeper dreams (like knowing God) when we are fed a steady diet of lesser desires satisfied (like job success and a happy family life). Only in the struggle do we awaken to the greater dreams.
2.5. Not many Christians drink deeply from the well of living water. As a result, our worship, community life, and witness are weak
In the church today, we usually expect people to either live the victorious life or to be broken in an acceptable way. Few people, even when they have experiences as hard as Naomi’s are able to admit their bitterness and struggles. As a result, few Christians find the living water which is able to satisfy the soul.
Those who do not know Jesus cannot find it because Christ has it. But those who pretend they are not hurt do not find it because we do not admit we need it. In the end, our worship, fellowship, and witness are weak and insipid.
2.6. No matter what happens in life, a wonderful dream is available, always, that if pursued will generate an unfamiliar, radically new internal experience, which will eventually be recognized as joy.
Rather than join with the Buddhists in numbing desire, God would have us dream greater things, that we can know him and the power of his Spirit. Then we will enter the joy of the Lord.
3. Conclusion
Crabb concludes one of his chapters by imagining what Jesus might say to us when we hurt:
“Some of your fondest dreams will shatter, and you will be tempted to lose hope. I will seem to you callous or, worse, weak – unresponsive to your pain. You will wonder if I cannot do anything or simply will not.
“As you struggle with dashed hopes, you will fail, just as my servant Peter did. You will feel discouraged with yourself to the point of self-hatred. And I will seem to withdraw from you and do nothing.
“When all of this comes to pass, my word to you is this: do not lose hope. A plan is unfolding that you cannot clearly see. If you could see it as I do, you would still hurt, but you would not lose hope. You would gladly remain faithful to me in the middle of the worst suffering. I guarantee you the power to please me, not to have a good time. But pleasing me will bring you great joy.
“In the deepest part of your soul, you long more than anything else to be a part of my plan, to further my kingdom, to know me and please me and enjoy me. I will satisfy that longing. You have the power to represent me well no matter what happens in your life. That is the hope I give you in this world. Don’t lose it.”
