“Valiant”?

A few weeks ago, my roommate (http://travelingcabinet.blogspot.com/) posted on her blog what I thought was a familiar quote from Proverbs 31, about the excellent wife. But this quote had a slight discrepancy that surprised me:

“Who shall find a valiant woman?”  (Proversb 31:10, Douay-Rheims Bible)

Valiant. Really? I was used to “An excellent wife, who shall find?” (ESV). But valiant? It was an interesting word choice and one that merited investigation. I pulled my Hebrew Bible and my Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament off the shelf and started flipping. My Hebrew is actually pretty weak (and Hebrew words regularly change spellings depending on their conjugation), so it took a while, but I was finally able to track down the word translated as “excellent” or “valiant”.

The word isand is a noun derived from the Hebrew verb, meaning to be firm or strong or to endure. The noun has a myriad of possible translations including “might, strength, power; able, valiant, virtuous, valor; army, host, forces; riches, substance, wealth.” It is used in a variety of contexts to refer to God and also to man. When referring to a man we may see it translated as “valiant man” or “mighty man of valor”. Says the TWOT “The individual designated seems to be the elite warrior similar to the hero of the Homeric epic…”  Such a person was often associated with wealth and honor, as befitted their station.

Of its use in Proverbs 31, TWOT says this: “When the term is used of a woman, it is translated “virtuous”, but it may well be that a woman of this caliber had all the attributes of her male counterpart.”

Valiant, heroic, strong, able, valuable..all of these seem to be fitting of the Proverbs 31 woman and “valiant” in particular seems, to me, to capture the vivacity of the Type A superwoman found here. But then I turned the page…

Now, in our English Bible, the books are arranged in a certain order. If you turn the page from the end of Proverbs you run smack into Ecclesiastes. However, in the Hebrew Bible, it’s different. Turn the page in the Hebrew Bible and you run smack into RUTH.

Ruth? Yes, Ruth. And really, what more appropriate follow-up to Proverbs 31 could there be? Ruth takes the Proverbs 31 woman out of her acrostic lines of poetry and into real life. The Proverbs 31 woman is described as a “valiant woman”, the exact same Hebrew phrase occurs in Ruth 3:11 when Boaz tells Ruth “all my fellow townsmen know that you are a worthy woman.” And the parallels don’t stop there.

Ruth works with willing hands (Proverbs 31:13), she brings her food from afar to Naomi (31:14) to provide food for her household (31:15), she considers a field to glean from it (31:16), she casts her lot with a poor widow to care for her (31:20). Boaz, her eventual husband, is known in the gates and sits among the elders (31:23), she is the practitioner of kindness (31:26, the word “kindness” <hesed> is one of the key words of the book of Ruth). You get the point.

So often the image I have seen of a housewife, a wife and mother, is characterized by meekness and mildness, which isn’t bad, but if you’re looking for THAT woman, she’s in 1 Peter 3. No, the Proverbs 31 woman, in her own right and as personified in Ruth, is a feisty go-getter, an initiative taker, a strong and heroic woman who fears nothing but the Lord, and spends herself self-sacrificially in service to others. She is a hero. And THAT is a woman I would strive to be like. A valiant one.

Vocabulary

He is sitting next to me, no longer on the other side of the ocean as he was when we first started dating, he in Japan and I in Singapore. This is, I think, a significant improvement and an appropriate one given that we have only 33 more days to count down before our wedding.

We started with holding hands in Nagoya station. I took the train north from the airport in Osaka and met him there under the golden clock. We had not discussed physical contact, but as we began to navigate through the crowds, his hand brushed mine. He pulled back, uncertain, but I said softly, “It’s okay, you can hold my hand.” And he did. It was our first vocabulary word.

At least, that’s what we called it from the beginning. We knew that any physical contact we had was only an expression, a statement, a declaration, of affection or love. We were saying I love you, I choose you, I am pleased with you, my desire is for you and your well being. We said it by holding hands through the train station and, later that day, the zoo, and later still on the long drive north to the relief base at Fukushima. We said it sitting under a river bridge next to the road, leaning against each other and singing worship with concrete and steel acoustics. We said it with entwined ankles under a dinner table, or a brush of fingertips against a cheek. We expanded vocabulary, carefully, cautiously, deliberately, walking the fine line between having enough words to say what we meant, but not saying what we did not yet have the permission, or courage to say.

I did not kiss him until December, an explosion of vocabulary, as words became sentences and paragraphs. And I thought then, to myself, what it would be like when we were married and our physical vocabulary was “complete”, when we had at least a rough draft of a finished dictionary. How then, would we learn to say I love you in new ways?

By washing the dishes, of course. By letting the other shower first. By giving in, or, conversely, by standing firm. By using our hands for caring, not just caressing, and our lips for kindness and not just kissing. A vast and endless vocabulary suddenly makes itself available, days upon days of unique opportunities to say again and again I love you, I choose you, I am pleased with you, my desire is for you and your good. And in this, we embody not only our words to each other, but God’s words to us, for this is a great mystery, but am I not speaking of Christ and the church?

For the Word became flesh, the logos incarnate, and the Word bore children for God,
little nouns and verbs of faithfulness and love that scattered to the ends of the earth,
sentences and paragraphs spoken through the lips, the hands, the feet of those who brought good news. We are the vocabulary of God as He cries out even now to His children throughout out the world

I love you. I choose you. I am pleased with you. My desire is for you and your well being.

The Opposite of Writer’s Block

I am not claustrophobic. In fact, I am quite fond of small and enclosed spaces. To me, they feel safe and secure. I’m the opposite of claustrophobic. What is that called again? Oh yeah. Agoraphobia. The fear of wide, open places. I don’t actually fear them. But I’m not fond of them. Give me boundaries and borders and a wall at my back, something to start and end with, definitions, guidelines. I shut down in the company of endless options and possibilities. I am at a loss standing in the grocery store with the option of making ANYTHING for dinner. The biggest challenge of wedding planning has not been having my desires be unmet, but by having all of them be possible!

And that is why I’m not writing. Frustrating, isn’t it? But I have an entire LIST of things I want to write about and I can’t settle down on one!

I want to write and that Christian adults that if you’re going to tell young people that it’s worth waiting until marriage, then you should probably be showing us a marriage worth waiting for.

I want to write about how America is being in delinquent in her responsibilities as the current world super power, and how she should suck up her nice fluffy sentiments about being nice and fair, take her gloves off, and start interfering in world matters. The world hates us already, so why not violate national sovereignty and save a few lives? (Syria, this means you).

I want to write about dystopias (I read Brave New World and 1984 for the first time this month) and what characterizes dystopias and how they can serve as a platform for a biblical worldview (Good job, Hunger Games, by the way, for brilliantly demonstrating the fallenness of man and hopelessness of human redemptive efforts).

I want to write a snarky little piece about how protecting endangered species is completely illogical from an evolutionary stand point. Pandas are not winning the survival-of-the-fittest game. Bummer. They should really work on that. But good news: the humans are winning.

I want to write about roses and donuts and how God answers not only big prayer requests but also small ones.

I want to write about the Hunger Games, A LOT about the hunger games actually, and how I realized that I live in the Capitol astride the world and I want to know what that means.

And last, but not least, I want to write about my recent discoveries regarding the word “excellent” in Proverbs 31 and it’s relationship to the book of Ruth.

But my agoraphobia is kicking in. So I’m going to go sew.

A Hymn for Easter

I heard this hymn for the first time last week and was blessed by both the beauty and the depth of the lyrics. It is a good place to be for Good Friday.

Stricken, smitten, and afflicted,
See Him dying on the tree!
’Tis the Christ by man rejected;
Yes, my soul, ’tis He, ’tis He!
’Tis the long expected prophet,
David’s Son, yet David’s Lord;
Proofs I see sufficient of it:
’Tis a true and faithful Word.

Tell me, ye who hear Him groaning,
Was there ever grief like His?
Friends through fear His cause disowning,
Foes insulting his distress:
Many hands were raised to wound Him,
None would interpose to save;
But the deepest stroke that pierced Him
Was the stroke that Justice gave.

Ye who think of sin but lightly,
Nor suppose the evil great,
Here may view its nature rightly,
Here its guilt may estimate.
Mark the Sacrifice appointed!
See Who bears the awful load!
’Tis the Word, the Lord’s Anointed,
Son of Man, and Son of God.

Here we have a firm foundation,
Here the refuge of the lost.
Christ the Rock of our salvation,
Christ the Name of which we boast.
Lamb of God for sinners wounded!
Sacrifice to cancel guilt!
None shall ever be confounded
Who on Him their hope have built.

Reforming the US Postal Service

So, the other day as I was on my drive to work, I decided to pass the time by trying to solve the problem of the Federal Post Office. I had recently read an article about how many rural post offices that service very small populations are being closed because they don’t generate enough income and are just a black hole for financially burdened industry. Some of those areas don’t even have internet so it really leaves people in the lurch!

This got me thinking about the old days when small rural communities would be serviced by Circuit Preachers; many towns couldn’t support their own parson or pastor, so a circuit preacher would do his rounds and visit communities for a month or so and then move on to the next one. This way everyone got service, even if it was temporally limited.

Could such an idea work for these small communities? Have mail service, but just weekly? But then again, why couldn’t such an idea work on a broader scale? I mean, the basic problem is that, due particularly to email and the internet, the USPS has more expenditure than income. It is doubtful that we could increase the amount of income for the USPS. So then, let’s consider cutting expenditures. Consider the following reforms:

1. The number of people the postal service employs will be constituency based, like our representatives. For example, a population of 5,000 households would merit 3 postal employees (let’s say a Postmaster, a mailman and a sorter or something). This way a consistent expenditure (an employee) is based on a consistent income (the patronage of 5,000 households). This is not to say that a 3 to 5,000 ratio is the ideal; I don’t have enough knowledge about the work of a post office to state that. But, the principle of constituency still applies. Population based employment to balance expenditure and income.

2. Reduce household mail delivery and pick-up to once a week. Drastic, yes, but no more drastic than weekly garbage pick-up. Fact: a typical household does not generate enough mail coming or going on a daily basis to justify daily at home pick up and delivery. Right now (again, making up ignorant numbers), a 5,000 household town needs 5 mailmen to provide it daily service. But what if, instead of having 5 men each delivering mail to 1,000 households daily, we had a single mailman delivering to 1,000 households a day once a week? We just cut expenses by 80%.

3. However, people like their mail to be available every day. And you can have your mail every day! But rather than deliver it to your house, you can choose to rent a P.O. Box at the post office where you can pick up daily mail yourself (or pay an entrepreneurial minded kid on your block to do it: one kid charging a dollar a day to 20 hours on his block could make $400 a month). This provides people with the daily mail availability they want, without spending money to get it to them, and generates further income for the rental of a P.O. Box. Likewise, you could drop off mail at the post office as often as you want.

4. Encourage the development of local courier services to facilitate this sudden postal void. Need that bill delivered TODAY (because for some bizarre reason you’re not using the online payment system that created this mess in the first place)? Call your Local Courier and he’ll take it across town for a dollar. Need that package shipped TODAY? Use FedEx or UPS, drive to your post office, or plan your shipping needs according to your mail man’s schedule.

Granted, these reforms would obviously cause cultural shifts. You’ll get birthday cards for two weeks instead of one, for example, or get a lot more e-cards! But culture has already experienced drastic shifts because of electronic communication; it makes sense that the USPS would have to make drastic shifts as well. By decreasing expenditures as described above, the USPS can stretch its hard earned dollars more to continue to provide their vital service to all Americans, maybe even the internet less ones in our precious rural communities.

 

The Value of Words

Words are fickle currency

A picture may be worth a thousand of them,

but so might a smell

or a sound  such as a baby crying in unarticulated frustration.

And often, the more you have, the more worthless they are

But perhaps that is simply supply and demand

 

Source of importation must be considered of course

For one word from a wise man

 is worth at least a hundred from a fool

One word may be called a ten dollar word, a curious estimation

Yet other words are not worth the paper they’re printed on

And some people will bet their life on a man’s word,

a valuable investment if anything is

And yet, in the midst of the thousand word picture,

the crying baby,

the wise man,

the fool,

ten dollars,

a tabloid

and a man’s life

even in the face of all these

Someone still stands to disturb the marketplace and proclaim that

Silence is golden

Excerpt from “Caddie Woodlawn”

Said Father Woodlawn:

“It’s a strange thing, but somehow we expect more of girls than of boys. It is the sisters and wives and mothers, you know, Caddie, who keep the worl dweet and beautiful. What a wough world it would be if there were only men and boys in it, doing things in their rough way!

Wars Never End

We are innocently watching an episode of Downtown Abbey, my roommate and I.

In the episode, the lord of the house descends the stairs to the kitchen in order to inform his staff that the war, the Great War, World War I, is over. Armistice has been declared and will begin on November 11^th, 1918 at 11:11. Everyone cheers and cries and embraces each other. They do not know, as I do, that many of them will live to see a second world war, and that their children and grandchildren will be the ones fighting it in their stead. That one too will end, though in two stages rather than one, one in a European theatre with the surrender of Nazi Germany and the second in a Pacific theatre with the surrender of irradiated Japan.

“It seems strange,” I comment to my roommate beside me, “to think of having a war that can end.”

I was 15 when smoke fountained out of New York skyscrapers, the collapsed side of an oddly five sided building, and an otherwise unremarkable field in Pennsylvania. My country has been at war ever since against seemingly invisible enemies that simultaneously surround us on every side and hide away in tiny Middle-Eastern hamlets. My father remembers Vietnam, the war of his generation, that meandered across several years and reaped a harvest of souls from his classmates and friends and village people whose foreign names we can neither record nor pronounce. When he was an infant, war wavered across Korean borders. To my knowledge, this war never officially ended. I am not sure about Vietnam. The “war against terror” of my generation rages on.

It seems strange, to me, to think of having a war that can end. I have not lived to see such a war.

But then I frown

“Then again,” I continue, “World War I didn’t really end. It just took a break for 20 years and then restarted again. And Korea and the Cold War were both children of World War II. Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe none of the wars never actually end.”

In the last 2,000 years, according to historians, we have had a grand total of 100 years of peace. That is, there have only been 100 years scattered among two millennia in which there has not been some kind of armed conflict somewhere in the world.

Wars don’t spring up overnight or on a whim. They are the offspring of centuries, decades, years of unrest, instability, nagging discontent, oppression, greed, betrayal, and other such things as a sinners’ world is made of. And I do not think they end. Their trailing roots lurk beneath the surface, and emerge again, rearing up heads of bloody conflict and breaking through our carefully cultivated façade of peace.

The episode of Downtown Abbey ends. The wars don’t. The television stays on and begins a documentary about royal weddings of the last century. My roommate continues sewing. I continue moving into a newly acquired very-used desk and whispering soft maranathas, as I dream of dragons, peace, the tooth fairy and other fantastical things I have never seen.

 

Reclaiming Christian Holy-Days

I remember the day my boss told me not to say Merry Christmas to customers.

“It might offend someone” said he. I was disgusted, no, infuriated. And, thank goodness, my boss’s boss, when he heard about this, said it was utterly ridiculous and immediately turned around a told a customer Merry Christmas to prove his point. Even so, this entire situation frustrated me for two reasons. The first and most obvious reason is because our society is so intent on sequestering religion to the public sphere that it tries to gently crack down on freedom of speech. But the second reason is because there are a lot more holidays that we should be getting flack about and we’re not. Three holidays in particular, deep with Christian significance, have been almost entirely surrendered by the church, and that is a tragedy.

 

It being January, I am referring specifically to the holidays that occur respectively in January, February and March, three holidays that each celebrate the life of a truly remarkable Christian man and, as such, should be heartily observed by the church. Instead, they are almost completely ignored.

 

The first of these is Martin Luther King Jr. day. Correction: REVEREND Martin Luther King Jr. day. That’s right. Our government officially and formally closes it’s office, schools and public services for an entire day TO HONOR A PASTOR. Because the fact is, before he was a civil rights leader and political activist, Martin was a Baptist pastor. His faith pervades his speeches and writing, his actions and movements. And, regardless of whether we agree with everything he ever said or did, he was still a faith-based passionate Christian man who impacted an entire nation in what we all recognize as a highly justified struggle for equality. Let us remember he and others like him who did not leave their faith to sit on a shelf or in a pew, but took it to the public streets to influence society! Why aren’t we celebrating?

 

The second of these is St. Valentine’s Day. No, not just Valentine’s Day, SAINT Valentine’s Day. St. Valentine is a little historically vague. We know very little about him beyond the fact that he was martyred for his Christian faith in Rome sometime in the 3rd century.Pope Gelasisu I included him in the company of saints “… whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose acts are known only to God.” So we don’t know much about him…except he laid down his life for love of Christ. Valentine’s Day has been hijacked to be a celebration of romantic love, a love that flares and fades, our society’s obsession. But this man showed true love, love that is evidenced by sacrifice, even to death. Let us remember he and others like him who understood that the love is a sacrifice of life and death, and who were willing to give their lives for the cause of Christ. Why aren’t we celebrating?

 

The third of these holidays is St. Patrick’s Day. Yep, another saint, sneaking into a secular calendar. And believe it or not, he is not most well known for painting himself green, pinching people, drinking green bear and getting wasted, or throwing parades. No, he is most well known as a missionary to an unreached and hostile nation, boldly going where no Christian had dared go before. At the time of Patrick Ireland was a pagan nation, and not a very friendly one at that. Patrick himself was kidnapped and enslaved there in his early life. But, years after his escape from slavery, he had a vision from God in which the people of Ireland were crying out to him for knowledge of the gospel. He returned, by himself, and almost single handedly converted Ireland to Christ. This is not to say that paganism died out overnight, but what is certain is that within Patrick’s lifetime, Ireland was transformed from a primarily pagan nation to a Christian one, a heritage that even continues to this day. St. Patrick was one of the beautiful crazy people of Christian history who boldly said “here am I, send me”. In a world today where there are still almost 7,000 unreached people groups (joshuaproject.net), this is a powerful example for us. Let us remember those who did not remain in the safety and comfort of their own land, people and culture, but who gave up everything to enter the unknown for the sake of lost people’s and nations. Why aren’t we celebrating?

 

I have several friends, God bless them, who very purposefully and passionately observe the Jewish holidays as Christians. They have the feast days and celebrate the Jewish roots of our faith, while drawing out the deeper-Christological meaning in the days. I think this is a wonderful and worthy practice. But what I see today is much more of a need to reclaim, rather than Jewish holidays, the Christian ones. They’re on the calendar. Let’s observe them and consider this “great cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1) that surrounds us, giving us an example of what it still means for us to “run with perseverance the race marked out.”

 

Nahum: Repentance No More

Today’s post is brought to you by the book of Nahum and an individual who, this morning, asked me why Nahum is in the Bible. The book of Nahum is a short oracle narrating the destruction of Niniveh, the capitol of the Assyrian empire. It tells of events that took place in 612 B.C. when, as described, the city is completely sacked, looted and destroyed. Nahum, in scripture, shows us God’s sovereignty over the rise and fall of ALL nations and assures God’s people of the ultimate sufficiency of God’s judgment. The same nation that God used to brutally judge His own people, is now itself judged for its own sin.

However, the book of Nahum is not the only minor prophet who deals with the capitol city of Nineveh, nor is it the most well-known. Jonah, the reluctant prophet, precedes Nahum by at least 150 years. Jonah prophecies destruction, the people of Nineveh respond in repentance, and Nineveh (much to Jonah’s chagrin) is spared judgment.

What I stumbled on in my study this morning is how both Jonah and Nahum reference the same scripture passage in describing a God who has mercy and a God who brings judgment.

Jonah is a drama queen and there’s really no getting around it. In the most epic pity party of the entire Bible, Jonah points his finger at the heavens and levels his accusations against the God who would DARE to show mercy to the Ninevites

“”O LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.”” (4:2)

But, this epic “I-told-you-so” from Jonah is not entirely his own words. Jonah is using God’s own God-given credentials for Himself, His resume, as it were, originally spoken to Moses in Exodus 34. Here, Moses asks God to show His glory, and God passes before Moses and proclaims Himself

“The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” (Exodus 34:6-7)

I like to call this the divine autologue (auto-logue meaning “self-word”, what God says about Himself). It occurs all throughout scripture and it is this resume that Jonah waves in front of God’s face. God subtlely affirms Jonah’s use of the resume at the end of the book of Jonah

“And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left…?” (Jonah 4:11)

In Jonah, God is indeed “keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin”.

But in Nahum, it’s the same God and the same resume, but a different story.

Nahum begins his oracle with a description of God.

“The LORD is a jealous and avenging God; the LORD is avenging and wrathful;
the LORD takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies.
The LORD is slow to anger and great in power, and the LORD will by no means clear the guilty.
His way is in whirlwind and storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet.” (Nahum 1:2-3)

Did you see it? It’s subtle, but the language is unmistakable “The LORD is slow to anger and great in power, and the LORD will by no means clear the guilty.”

It’s the divine autologue again, BUT it is a divine autologue without mercy. Nahum quotes the passage but removes all of the references to God’s love and mercy, for God has removed his love and mercy from Nineveh entirely.

“THE LORD, (the LORD, a God merciful and gracious) SLOW TO ANGER (and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who) WILL BY NO MEANS CLEAR THE GUILTY…”

And just as in Jonah, God fulfills His proclamation and is “keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin”, so now in Nahum, God fulfills His proclamation “visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

And sure enough, the destruction of Nineveh in 612 B.C. happens approximately 150-200 years after the preaching of Jonah, or, three to four generations. And the destruction, as archaeology evidences and Nahum describes, is brutal.

There are several lessons to draw out of this, but the most crucial that I want to point out is that God’s offer of mercy and our opportunity for repentance is temporary.

It is “The LORD, the LORD” who, in Jonah, relents from the destruction He intended and, instead, forgives and shows mercy to the repentant city. It is also “The LORD, the LORD” who, in Nahum, has had enough of “the prostitute, graceful and of deadly charms, who betrays nations with her whorings, and peoples with her charms.” (Nahum 3:4)

It is “the LORD, the LORD” who today offers us forgiveness and mercy, through Christ

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For he says,  “In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.”  Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” (2 Corinthians 5:21-6:2)

It is also “the LORD, the LORD” who will ultimately visit judgment on individuals, communities and nations who do not take advantage of His merciful offer.

^“Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? ⁵ But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.” (Roamns 2:4:5)

Don’t wait forever, for, as Nahum shows us, God won’t.