We like things to look forward to. We like big hurrahs. We like plans on the calendar, weekends away, and dinner with friends. We like planes to Europe and hiking in mountains and beaching with 25 friends, 3 times a year. We like Derby hats and Costa Rica surrongs and the pleasure of Starbucks in the afternoon with friends. These are things that bring us great joy, that spark anticipation in the weeks leading, and cultivate conversations and friendships and memories and flourishing delight. They bring a fullness to our days, our years, our hearts. Causationaly, when life felt lifey, we'd quickly plan a fun Saturday outing or weekend getaway or day trip to Charleston. Anything to avoid the "lifey" slump -- to keep our lives fresh, our hearts awake.
Over the past year, I have diligently reflected on this perspective and filtered thoughts between adventure and "lifey-ness." I've watched people from afar, and listened to those close. I've stared around Trader Joes as every mother, young and old, fill their grocery cart once again this week, as they did the last. I see neighbors walk to the mailbox and unload carseats and lug in briefcases today, just as they will tomorrow. I've sat with mommy friends who play on the floor today, just as they did in January and will still in July. I've listened to women prepare Bible studies for this week, as they will the next four, and the past twenty four. I've watched empty carts go into Target and gas tanks into BP this week, just like they did the last, and leave full but only for another week...
Many days, life is... lifey. A lot of days I find myself peering at this thought and pausing at the motions and being confused and pouty with the notion. I want sweeping romance! I want Braveheart epics! I want African adventure! I want real-life novels and movies and one-hour snipits of Primetime that appear so... full and fun and frivolous! I like exciting! I like the hurrah and drama and the exploration and the creation! New, afresh, alive, anticipation! !Voila!
But then God draws me to himself, and to his Word, and redirects my vision, my heart, my focus, and my eyes. He asks me to slow my dreaming, quiet my comparing, and simply... be faithful. If there is one thing he has talked to me about this year, it is is:
"When life is lifey, be faithful."
I spent all of fall in an inductive study of the book of Ruth. What stared at me each week, was the humble boringness of most of her tasks, the completely unknown of what would become, yet her choice to be faithful in each role.
I like to think of her life like a great two-hour film, with its opening scene of grief, the drama of the dusty road, the role play of relationships coming to Bethlehem, the meeting in the grains and scandelous love scene to follow... I like the drama, the intererst, the way her entire life is written beautifully in four chapters, and I'm swallowed up in the sea of love and bliss and babies and the sweeping of a grandeur story along the way...
So I ponder. And I reminisce: if my life were in four chapters, it'd read pretty good. Cockily, I could line up great tales of camp or teaching, adventures of travel, spotlights in high school, or things done with kids... I could layer stories like poetry of marriage and friendships and the all that blossoms within. Then add seasons of drama, crisis, and emotions... Four Chapters, sure, I got that! But that's not how life is lived. Life doesn't gather events like pride on an abbacus or hop only on stepping stones...
So I sit with Ruth. I re-read. I pause and let it sit, let it sink in. Let it flesh out like hours and days, not verses and plucked episodes. Most of Chapter One presented long melancholy and probably sad monotony. Marraige, living with in-laws, getting water from the well, baking bread, feed the men... and time goes on day by day, year by year, more water, more bread, more meals... Three compositions of dying and death, dirt roads and dust. Feet heavy with sorrow, relationships bequeathed with confusion, and minutes melded with tears.
Then with great fan-fare -- no, actually with a dusty walk for days upon days upon days, comes Chapter Two. In the months and seasons of harvest and gleaning and threshing, Ruth continues the tasks set before her. She walks the edges of the field, picking up each kernel of dropped wheat, adding to her meager stack from today, just as she did yesterday, just as she will do tomorrow. Months past and she beats the wheat on the threshing floor. All morning she's been at it, and still now this afternoon, callouses still brooding from weeks before. Day after day of these simple tasks...
Chapter Three brings all of love in one conversation, then waiting to find her fate -- one night rapturing a whole tale with drama on its own...
With Chapter Four comes a wedding and a baby, ignoring the nine months of pregnancy, which is actually about 40 weeks or 280 mornings of nausea or large belly or waiting... Then mornings waking and hours feeding and dinners setting and baths cleaning... Then a quick conclusion, a summation and wrap-up of the entirety of her life all at once, as if with a bow or ribbon tied on top. All of Ruth, in four chapters.
In Ruth's Four Chapters, all the dramas and traumas are actually small stitches woven into one long life of living a lot of small moments, faithfully. She didn't know she wold live in epic fore-tale of Christ's birth. She didn't know she would be named amongst the line of Jesus. She only knew she had to walk the dirty road, thresh the wheat another day, find a squatting hole once more, nurse the baby another dawn.... It wasn't the episodes that made her such a woman of hope, of dignity, of nobility (Proverbs 31). But it was the faithful choices along the way.
So when life feels lifey, when there are no adventures to be had, no birds out your window. When the laundry is full another day, and the dishwasher once again calls your name... Learn a lesson from Ruth:
When life is lifey, be faithful.
No comments:
Post a Comment