Mother’s Day

I want to start today, this Mother’s Day, with these words from the apostle Paul.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13)

We need hope because we can’t not think about the future, but we also can’t control the future.

Every mom with kids who have grown up and gone away hopes they’ll come back for a day.

Every mom who has kids who have been home every day for two months hopes they’ll go away for a day just for the rest.

But when you’ve worked at a church for a while, you realize how NOT simple Mother’s Day is.

Some people are grieving their moms. A friend just lost his mom, so this is a real bittersweet day.
Some women want so badly to be moms but can’t.
Some moms are estranged from their children.
Some women choose not to be moms and often feel overlooked or devalued on this day.
Some people have had a very painful relationship with their mom.

A friend of mine at an old church called this caveat day, because there are so many sensitive situations that need to be named.

So what we’re going to talk about today on caveat day is what to do with hope when what you hoped for has not happened.

Lewis Smedes wrote there was an old cavalry model. “When your horse dies, dismount and saddle another.”

That’s true of hopes, too. You can’t ride a dead hope any more than you can ride a dead horse.

Lewis said, “Life is a series of hope adjustments.”

What do you do when reality is not what you hoped it would be?

You’re not going to have kids.
You’re not going to get married.
You’re not going to have the marriage you wanted.
You’re not going to get into that school.
You’re not going to have that career.
You’re going to have that illness or that disease or that problem you most wanted not to have.

When your life doesn’t adjust itself to fit your hopes, how do you adjust your hope to fit your life?

The Bible has a story about a woman like that. Her name was Naomi.

She had a husband and two boys, and they lived in Israel, but there was a famine, so they had to leave their land and immigrate to Moab where they hoped to live as resident aliens until they could afford to move back.

While they were there, Naomi’s husband died.

She married her two sons off to two Moabite girls hoping they would raise families and be able to take care of her, but after 10 years and no grandchildren, first, her older and then her younger son died.

A person who has lost their home is called an alien.
A woman who has lost her husband is called a widow.
A child who has lost their parent is called an orphan.

There is no word for a parent who has lost a child. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because it seems to violate the natural order of things.

Some of you know that pain.

All of this happens in only the first five verses of the book, and the widow, Naomi, decides she will return to Israel.

There is no heir. That means the family she and her husband began is at an end.

That means in a land-based economy like theirs their old land is gone forever.

That means in a patriarchal society like theirs there will be no status for her, no safety net for her, and no belonging for her.

She has to adjust to the loss of virtually every one of her hopes.

She tells in a very poignant moment her two daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth, that they should stay behind, live in Moab, find new husbands, and start new families.

They weep together with her.
They weep for their dead husbands.
They weep for their childless lives.
They weep for one another.

Her two daughters-in-law offer to go with her, but Naomi won’t hear of it. Naomi says:

Even if I thought there was still hope for me—even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons—would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord’s hand has turned against me!”

At this they wept aloud again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her. (Ruth 1:11-14)

This book of the Bible has influenced how people think about hope more than any other book in world history, and this is the first time the word hope occurs in Scripture for Naomi, who has none.

Naomi says, “Even if I thought there was still hope for me…” Which she does not. Life is bitter. “…the Lord’s hand has turned against me!”

Think about that. “Go home.”

One of them does. Orpah kisses her goodbye and goes home to Moab to find another husband and start another family… and become a famous celebrity TV talk show host.

Oprah was actually named after Orpah with a slight misspelling.

Ruth will not listen. Ruth will not go back, and she says these unforgettable words that are so beautiful. I want to read them from the old King James Version.

And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God:

Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me. (Ruth 1:16-17)

Who is this woman?

In the Old Testament, Abraham is often taken as the hero of hope and faith, but Abraham got called by God.

He got the promise of God that he and his old wife would have a child.
He got a covenant from God.
He could take his spouse with him when he left.
He could take his possessions and his servants and his wealth.

Ruth had nothing. Ruth stands alone. Ruth leaves behind her country, her people, and her religion.

She was barren but got no promise from God that she would ever have a child and be a mom.

In a patriarchal world, this woman, Ruth, commits herself NOT to find a husband who could bring her hope but to an old lady who has no hope at all, and in an ethnocentric world, Moabites were so despised by the Israelites they were not allowed to join the assembly. They worshiped the god, Chemosh, by sometimes offering human sacrifice.

A despised Moabite decides to immigrate to Israel.

By the way, don’t miss this moment. This is her conversion.

“Your God, the God of Israel, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the God of the Ten Commandments, will be my God.”

By the way, notice that she does this even though she never got a calling from heaven like Abraham did.

Ruth is a fascinating book in this way.

There is no divine guidance in it.
There is no burning bush.
There is no still small voice.
There are no angelic visions.
No one gets miraculously directed or healed or raised from the dead.

Ruth has to make decisions on her own and muddle through life as best she can.

Maybe your life is kind of like that. This might be a really good book for you.

It’s a really good book for ordinary people, because the most daring act of hope and devotion in all of the Old Testament is done by a penniless, childless, pagan, uncalled, Moabite widow. Go figure!

When it comes to an act of faith, Ruth leaves even old father Abraham in the dust.

As someone once said of an old movie star named Ginger Rogers who danced with the more renowned Fred Astaire, “She did everything he did but backwards in high heels.”

Ruth did everything Abraham did but backwards in high heels.

Two daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth.

Orpah responds to her loss by re-pursuing her same old hopes.

Her choice made sense. She is not criticized in the text (not at all). Orpah did what any reasonable person would do.

Ruth did what only an unreasonable person would do.

We never hear of Orpah again. Her contrast with Ruth in this story is meant to raise these questions.

I wonder if maybe my life right now is characterized by normal hopes and reasonable desires that are not bad, but I haven’t asked if maybe God has another deeper, costlier, riskier hope for me.

Ruth makes this completely unexpected and unreasonable step, and if you were to ask her, “Ruth, why would you do this?” there’s really only one answer.

She was betting the farm on love. Not romantic love. Quite the contrary.

She has a hope not that her circumstances would turn out a certain kind of way but that the universe would turn out to be a certain kind of place where a costly act truly done in love would not be wasted, and Naomi can’t talk her out of it.

So they return together to Israel to Naomi’s old hometown of Bethlehem.

The text says the whole town is buzzing they’re so excited. “It’s our girl! Naomi is back after all of these years!”

They’re so excited, but Naomi responds:

“Don’t call me Naomi,” she told them. “Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? [which means pleasant] The Lord has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.” (Ruth 1:20-21)

It’s kind of weird that this dark, little speech made it into the Bible.

For people who think hope is a chirpy, sentimental, pain-avoidant form of religious denial for people who lack the courage to look reality square in the eye, that is not Naomi.

Naomi says, “Women, if you think I’m going to pretend like everything is okay just so you don’t have to be bothered by my pain, you have another thing coming.”

With Naomi, it’s not just that she says, “My life stinks,” but she says, “My life stinks, and it’s God’s fault. Are you listening, God? Are you going to comment, God?”

Again, the writer of Scripture doesn’t comment on Naomi’s speech. Doesn’t say it’s good. Doesn’t say it’s bad. It’s just human. It’s just real.

That’s the only place where hope can start.

Naomi has this going for her. She’s honest with God. She believes her God would prefer authentic complaint to fake optimism.

Maybe today your hope adjustment starts here with just naming reality.

“Today, my life is bitter to me. A dream has died. I’ve lost what I treasured most (this person, this spouse, this child, this friend, this work). My suffering feels unbearable to me.”

You see, hope has to start where you are, not where you think you should be and not where you wish you were.

One more observation about Naomi here. This is often true of us when life disappoints us.

She doesn’t see her life altogether clearly. She speaks to these women in her old hometown only about herself.

“Don’t call me pleasant. Call me bitter. My life… The Lord afflicted me. The Lord brought misfortune on me. I left here with a husband and two sons. I came back alone.”

Then, the narrator of the story very artfully points out that this is not quite true.

So Naomi returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth the Moabite… (Ruth 1:22)

No, no, no, Naomi. You are not quite alone. Not quite.

Ruth stands there, but Naomi in her suffering and pain seems not to notice.

We all do this. We all tend to see life through our own pain.

Often hope begins not necessarily when our pain lessens but when we see the pain of someone else and the thought comes, “I could help.”

That thought came to a childless widow named Ruth. — “I could help her.”

God has given you more than you know. God has always given us more than we know, so if you find yourself on this day, on this Mother’s Day, on this caveat day, having lost some of what you hoped for, you might pause a moment right now to look next to you and see if your life is maybe, maybe, not quite as empty as you thought.

You have a friend.
You have a church.
You have a job.
You have a home or a car or some gifts.
You have an education.
You have a mind.
You have a Savior.
You have a Savior!

It’s this unnoticed gift, this unacknowledged daughter, who begins the rebirth of hope for Naomi.

Now, we go into chapter 2.

And Ruth the Moabite…

Notice in the first chapter when they’re in Moab, Ruth is just Ruth, but now she’s a stranger. Now, she’s an alien. Now, she’s unwanted. Now, she’s not just Ruth. Now, she’s Ruth the Moabite.

It’s an amazing story.

And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, “Let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find favor.” (Ruth 2:2)

Now, this is a striking development as we enter into this story to go alongside the institutionalized poor of Israel to try to avoid starving by gleaning leftover grain.

Again, Ruth the Moabite didn’t have to do that. She could go home to Moab. She could find a man.

Not just that, part of what’s striking in this statement is she’s a foreigner, a Gentile, likely to be shunned or worse.

In fact, later on in the book, it says the men in the fields who are gleaning have to be warned not to touch her.

This is often quite a dangerous world for a woman. Yet, she’s willing to do this.

She’s not just willing to do it, but it’s her idea. She initiates this plan. She actually asks Naomi’s permission so she will not offend her mother-in-law by publicly revealing their poverty.

Not just that, she has somehow, she believes, reason to hope that someone out there is going to look with favor on a Moabite woman.

Where does this hope come from?

I want to take a moment right now in the middle of this story to look at the emotion of hope, the experience of hope, so that you can learn how to adjust it.

It’s important to know the difference as we try to grow hope as followers of Jesus between a physical sensation or a physical feeling and an emotion.

Physical sensations have causes.

If someone asks, “Why are you itchy?” I would give them a cause.

It might be because I wore a wool shirt or I have a rash.

I never criticize you for itching. You just itch.

Emotions are different. Emotions have reasons.

Let’s say I’m driving, and a woman behind me keeps honking at me, and my wife asks me, “Why are you so angry at that woman?”

“I’ll tell you why. Because she keeps honking at me. It ticks me off.” I give her an extended version of my dirtiest look.

Then, she pulls up alongside me and gestures that my left rear tire is wobbling and about to fall off.

That’s why she had been honking. She wasn’t being rude; she was being kind.

Now, I’m not angry anymore. I’m grateful that she was trying to help me. She was trying to save my life. And I’m grateful she doesn’t go to our church.

My anger was based on a false belief, so it was actually wrong.

It’s very important to understand about emotional growth.

Your therapist may have been saying to you for years, “An emotion can’t be right or wrong; it’s just a feeling,” and hearing me say a feeling can be wrong might make you mad.

Well, your therapist was wrong, and you should feel grateful.

Hope, if it’s going to be the real thing, needs a reason.

Peter writes:

Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. (1 Peter 3:15)

Hope requires both wanting and believing.

Now, if I want something really, really badly but I believe I’ll never get it, then I experience despair.

High want plus no belief equals despair.

Then, my life is bitter. Then, I am Mara.

One way to deal with this, because none of us can survive indefinitely on despair, is to get myself to not want it so much. I try to ratchet down my want. I tell myself, “I can live without it.”

Low want plus no belief is resignation.

Resignation is often a healthy way to handle a lot of my small hopes.

“I will never be Oprah. I’ll never bench press 300 pounds. I’ll never play in the NBA with Steph Curry. I will never play guitar for U2.” I’ve just resigned myself to that.

However…however…each of us has what might be called a master desire — what the Danish think are what Kierkegaard called an essential passion.

Your essential passion is what you desire above all else — that desire that outranks all of your other wants.

An essential passion is what can integrate and unify a life. It’s the foundation on which your life stands.

So choose your essential passion wisely.

Ruth had chosen hers. “Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God.”

Love (love for God and love for people) had become the essential passion of Ruth’s life.

Who was this woman?

Now, children are born with what might be called pre-reflective optimism. We have a built-in bias that we’re going to get what we want and what we pursue.

But sooner or later that kind of pre-reflective optimism in children hits a wall, and we all have to adjust to reality.

Now, you can resign yourself to any finite outcome. You can downgrade your desire for anything else. — “I’ll never own this, drive that, work there, marry her, look like him…”

But you need and you must have an essential passion that is worthy of your life and that is certain for your destiny, and that is God.

It’s the testimony of the writers of Scripture — only God.

An author by the name of Robert Roberts notes that Paul did not say, “May the God of resignation fill you with tolerance for your destiny.”

May the God of hope fill you with joy and peace…so that you overflow with hope… (Romans 15:13)

Ruth chose the love of the God of hope as her essential passion; therefore, she was full of hope in a situation that was not hopeful.

Hoping, as opposed to wishing, has a very strong bias toward action.

Resignation doesn’t act much. Hope does. Hope acts. Despair quits.

Ruth acts in hope. “Let me go glean,” she says to her mother-in-law.

Now, when she takes action in hope, things begin to happen.

A man named Boaz sees her in the field, and he asks a fascinating question. Boaz asks the foreman of his harvesters, “Whose young woman is that?”

Of course, the short and amazing answer was, “She was nobody’s woman.”

Now, in the ancient world, if you were a woman, you were somebody’s woman. Your identity was dependent on your relationship to a man. You were your father’s daughter, or you were your husband’s wife. That’s who you were.

For Ruth to spurn everything her culture said a woman was and to risk it all in order to express her love for another woman (her mother-in-law) was a courageously subversive act.

Now, Boaz is not irritated by this. He’s not threatened by this.

To the contrary — he marvels. He admires Ruth’s devotion to Naomi, and he watches out for her in a real tender way.

In a wonderful detail of the story, when Boaz is a little slow in the romance department, Ruth actually proposes to Boaz.

She knows since Boaz is a relative of Naomi, if she marries Boaz, in that culture that meant that Boaz will care for Naomi as well.

This is an amazingly generous gesture on her part, and Boaz again marvels at Ruth’s heart.

He says:

This kindness [That is, her desire to get married to Boaz] is greater than before. You have not run after the younger men whether rich or poor. (Ruth 3:10)

Is Boaz saying a relatively mature man can’t be dashing and debonair?

Apparently so. There’s no hope for that.

Mostly, this was extreme modesty just considered polite in the ancient Near East. — “You could have way more handsome men than me.” It was a polite thing for the guy to say.

He would expect the woman to say, “No, no, no! You’re really good looking!”

Ruth and Boaz end up getting married.

By the way, and oh, by the way, and oh, by the way — they have a son.

The women of Bethlehem (the chorus in this story) get together once again like they did way back in the first chapter and praise God.

They’re all excited again, and they bless Naomi, and they say to her:

For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth. (Ruth 4:15)

Are you kidding me? One woman, and a daughter-in-law at that, is worth or better than seven sons?

That’s the kind of story that will make you rethink patriarchy and the worth of a woman all over again.

Naomi says, “The Lord has not stopped showing his kindness. I thought he had. I was bitter, but I was wrong.”

She is not Mara anymore. She’s Naomi. She’s herself again.

And she holds that little baby in her arms. Not just a baby. That’s eight pounds of hope.

Oh, by the way, the baby’s name is Obed, and he would grow up and have a boy named Jesse, and Jesse would grow up and have a boy named David, and David would grow up and become king even though David was one-eighth Moab. King David was one-eighth Moab.

Then, one day there was a son of David named Jesus, and Ruth is in his genealogy, which means there is a little Moab in Jesus, too, which means now there is hope for anyone. Even Moabites.

Today, Mother’s Day, caveat day, I’d invite you to do a little hope adjustment.

Whether it’s a hurt or a loss or a disappointment or gut-wrenching grief in your life, bring it to God. He’ll give you wisdom to know what the right course of action is.

But make real clear what your essential passion is, and not just the things you hope for but the one you hope in.

Do all of your human hope adjustments in light of the one unchanging hope.

Then, for today, ask this question like Ruth. Who might I bring hope to?

I want to give you a practice this week that will help you grow in hope.

It’s serve someone.

When Ruth served Naomi, she wasn’t just bringing her grain. She wasn’t just bringing her food. She was bringing her hope.

If you’re in a small group, what can you do to serve the other people in your group?

I heard about a small group of married couples, and the couples without children decided to each make one meal a week for the couples with kids who are going a million miles a minute.

That’s serving. What a gracious, generous thing to do! That’s bringing hope. It can be that small.

What Ruth did has brought hope in the darkness now for thousands of years.

I was reading a book about the year when England and Winston Churchill stood alone against Hitler in Nazi Germany.

At one point, Franklin Roosevelt sent to England from the US his closest confidante.

He was a frail, small, little advisor named Harry Hopkins in really bad health, already in the grip of a disease that would eventually kill him.

By this time, all of Europe had fallen to Hitler (Austria, Poland, Belgium, Holland, Norway, and France), and Churchill, of course, gave this gift of defiant hope to England that Hitler could be defeated, that even if he would not it would be better for them, as Churchill put it, to die choking on their own blood than to surrender to this evil tyrant.

But it was clear England alone would not be able to prevail.

They would need the help of the United States, and the US public was in the grip of a real strong isolationist movement called America First.

So Churchill turned all of his considerable powers of persuasion and charm on Harry Hopkins to get help from Franklin Roosevelt and the United States.

At the end of Hopkins’ visit, there was an amazing scene, a great banquet in Glasgow, Scotland.

At the end of that banquet, Hopkins said to Churchill, “I suppose you would like to know what I shall tell the president when I return.”

Well, that was an understatement. The fate of the civilized world was in the balance.

Churchill and everybody in the room held their breath. Would the US walk with England on a path that would mean blood and tears and sacrifice and death together, or would it withdraw while the world fell under the shadow of genocide and barbarism and evil beyond description?

Would there be hope?

Hopkins said something like, “You probably want to know what I will say to the president. Well, I’m going to quote to him one verse from the book of books in the truth of which my own Scottish mother was raised.”

Then, his voice dropped to nearly a whisper, and he quoted, “…whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God…”

Churchill, this great defiant lion of England, just wept like a baby.

One of the attendees wrote, “We all knew what it meant. It was a rope thrown to a drowning man.”

There is hope. “…whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God…”

That’s the story.

We’re going to close with a song that pronounces the blessing that has given hope to God’s people now for thousands of years.

You need these words.

I want to beg you. Don’t check out. Don’t go on autopilot.

You don’t have to sing these words if you don’t want to. Just sit there and receive them.

It’s amazing that God told the very first priest, Aaron, this was the blessing with which God’s people are to be blessed.

God said, “Tell them, ‘The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you.’”

There is no beauty in all the world like the beauty of a shining face. That’s what a grandparent’s face does when they hold that little grand-baby.

There are not enough words to express what is in their heart, so their face takes over. They shine. They beam.

That’s what Naomi’s old, old face did when she held that little child.

That’s what God wants to do over you right now. That’s the love he wants to give you right now.

That is the foundation (hope) that alone is worthy of being your essential passion in life and in death.

So be still. Be very, very still and receive a blessing from God.

Song: The Blessing by Kari Jobe