This morning I woke up with a basic thought and after
reading about the life of Francis Thompson decided
I'd pursue an end to it. Hope you will enjoy! J
reading about the life of Francis Thompson decided
I'd pursue an end to it. Hope you will enjoy! J
BASIC TRUTH
I've learned two basic truths,
Life revolves around truth and lies;
People either stand on Truth,
Or they spin in sin until they die.
Basic truth: God is love,
He sent His Son from above;
People choose belief in Jesus,
Or they follow after money love.Love of money leads to evil,
Earthly treasures soon fly away;
Faith in finances will prove futile,
So don't just save for a rainy day.
Basic truth: God is perfect,
He comforts the broken heart;
Choose to be made holy,
You will be set apart.
Peripheral Identities
The Old Testament book of Ruth is a careful commentary on the interplay of self and social identity in its characters. No opportunity is missed to describe Ruth as the perpetual outsider. She is referred to throughout the story as "Ruth the Moabite" or "the Moabite woman" or even merely "the foreigner." In fact, even Ruth refers to herself as a foreigner. Yet her seemingly permanent status as an outsider is juxtaposed with her wholehearted declaration to identify herself with a new people, a new land, and a new God. "Where you go, I will go," she says to her mother-in-law. "Where you stay, I will stay; your people shall be my people, and your God my God."
Identity is a complicated thing. Even when we try to identify ourselves with something new, something we know to be true, something given to us or chosen for ourselves, it may only be a peripheral identity.
Nineteenth century poet Francis Thompson led the turbulent life of one caught between such dueling identities. His father wanted him to study at Oxford and become a physician, but Francis wanted to be a writer and moved to London to pursue a career. Sadly, he lost his way in drugs, and for the rest of his life he would oscillate between brilliant writer and homeless addict. He lived on the streets, slaking his opium addiction in London's Charing Cross and sleeping on the banks of the River Thames. But he continued to scribble poetry wherever he could, mailing his work to the local newspaper. The editor was immediately taken, noting there was one greater than a Milton among them, a slumbering genius with no return address. Thompson acknowledged that he was running from God, and in fact, spent his life wrestling between his identity as a child on the run and his identity as a child who had been found. Once succumbing to the pursuing Christ, he penned the famous words to
"The Hound of Heaven."
"The Hound of Heaven."
I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him,
down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
I fled Him,
down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
Our deepest pains have a way of shaping who we are and what we see. Thompson's divine pursuer is one Ruth did not yet know, and Naomi could not see. Interestingly, the first time Naomi spoke directly of her God within earshot of the foreigner who pledged to follow this God, it was to say that God had made her cold and grieving. Naomi imparts that her name should no longer be Naomi, which means "my delight," but Mara, which means "bitter." "For I went out full," she says, "but the LORD brought me back empty."
Naomi's words are honest. Her grief is unfathomable, and the very meaning of her name seems a cruel irony. But she was also not seeing everything clearly. Tightly wound within Naomi's identity was her status as a widow, her status as empty. But she was not only a widow; she was not alone in her grief. She had not returned entirely empty. Naomi returned to Judah with the gift of a loyal daughter-in-law who had pledged to discover the God of Israel, maybe even as Naomi rediscovered the God of Israel again herself.
It is often in the battle of our warring identities that we most clearly discover who we are. In the midst of defeat, in the presence of adversity or dejection, God comes to us as we are, as we see ourselves, reminds us that we are made in the image of the divine and gives us a new identity. Naomi was indeed bitter, and she had every right to cast off the identity of delight in her name. Ruth had chosen a new life for herself, but she was indeed a foreigner, and was reminded of her status as an outsider at every turn. Even so, these identities would not sway the God who loved them.
In the book of Ruth, the identity of God is always somewhere in the interplay of the dueling identities of the characters, and in the end, who God is seems to inform all else. God is the one who cares for the outsider, the one who brings an empty woman through her bitterness, the one who brings a redeemer. Moreover, this God is the one who would eventually bring the Messiah through the bloodline of two widows; a foreigner named Ruth and a grieving woman named Naomi.
Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at RZIM in Atlanta, Georgia.