The Ecclesiastes of Housekeeping

A riff on Ecclesiastes 1:2-11.

“Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Mother.
“Utterly meaningless!
All this work is meaningless.”

What does a mother gain from all her labor under her roof?
One child goes off to school and one child remains home,
Yet lunch-making endures forever.
The dirty dishes rise in the sink, and the dirty dishes recede,
Yet they always hasten back to the stack, in need of scrubbing once more.
The dust settles on furniture and floor
Before it kicks up into the air;
Round and around it goes,
Whirling constantly throughout the house.
Dirty laundry spins in the machine,
Yet the mound of clothing never ceases.
From the place those grass-stained t-shirts came,
They will return to the pile again .
All the housework is wearisome,
More than a woman can say.
The eye always spots something out of place,
The ear always hears a dripping sink.

Nothing will change, it will all be the same,
It will all need doing again and again;
And there are no new gadgets that lighten the load.
Is there any invention of which it can be said:
“Look! Here is a new sponge”?
That sponge is the same as long ago;
Our mothers used it before our time.
There will be no end to the continual scrubbing.
Even our great-grandchildren will toil away.
And it will still be utterly meaningless!

This and That

I am in the midst of the second week of "The Summer of Fun" around here.

You see, starting in the fall, my family is going to be experiencing a milestone--a transition, if you will, which is going to change things around here quite a bit. And while it will be a good development (I believe all stages of life have a sweetness) it will also mark the end of an era that I have found to be particularly sweet. And in an attempt to savor the very last drops of sweetness in this current cup of mine, I have declared an all out extravaganza of fun and activity this summer.

Basically I'm going devour my kids all day, every day. I tell you this so you will understand why this post is going to be a few random, mostly underdeveloped thoughts strung together. You are just going to have to forgive me. I've been up to urgently important things, like reading piles of library books, and making up ridiculous knock-knock jokes. (Oh, if you only knew!)

But my mind hasn't completely given up the contemplation of Scripture over the past few weeks, and in that vein, allow me to present the following for your consideration:

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You know that verse, 2 Thessalonians 3:10, that says, "For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat."

I heard someone railing against the 'welfare state' in our country and using this verse to condemn it as unbiblical. Well, let me just say, I ain't taking a position on politics here, but a little bit of proper context seemed to me to be in order.

You do realize that Paul was addressing this statement to the church, right? Not the government. He was saying that church members must not be allowed to loaf around and sponge off of their fellow saints. Apparently some of the Thessalonians believed that Christ's second coming was so imminent that they gave up working and caring for their everyday responsibilities. Paul was having none of that, and said so. I don't think he had any kind of 21st century American political agenda in mind.

And by the way, all of that loafing led to some other problematic behaviors, as Paul goes on to list in verses 11 and 12. "For we hear that there are some who walk among you in a disorderly manner, not working at all, but are busybodies. Now those who are such we command and exhort through our Lord Jesus Christ that they work in quietness and eat their own bread."

Busybodies. Every known one of those? Bet she didn't have enough work to keep her busy!

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I've been increasingly discouraged lately. I hesitate to blog about it, because it is so very negative, and I hate to fill this blog up with criticism. But I can't escape the awful realization that so many of my fellow Christians are by and large biblically illiterate and lack even the most basic level of discernment.

There, I said it.

And to add salt to the wound, I am specifically talking about people who have grown up in church, or have spent a majority of their life involved in church.

Now, before you go thinking what a snob I am and feel offended, let me add this: I have been there. I grew up in the church. I played the role of sweet-christian-do-gooder for a while. Not very well, I'll be the first do admit. But still, I do have some empathy for church attenders who don't know that much about Christianity and the Bible.

It's just that my empathy is starting to wear thin, and I'm thinking "Come on people! Do you believe this stuff at all? How can you believe the amazing, overarching message in Scripture and not be serious about it?"

Christian friends of mine tell me from time to time that they are not smart like me, and they just don't know as much as I do. Well, let me tell you something. I'm not all that smart! And I wasn't born knowing the things that I have come to understand. I have just taken the time to study and read and question and challenge and discuss. I've asked the hard questions and remained dissatisfied until I got an answer. I mean, if you understand that the God and Creator and King of the universe bore a curse, and became sin, and died in your place, how can you really be content without exploring Him and His revealed Word to the fullest understanding possible? It is quite simply the most fascinating topic in, well, the universe.

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So, I went blueberry picking a few days ago, and now my fridge is full of blueberries. I'm going to make a real, homemade blueberry pie tomorrow, and I an PUMPED!

While reading in quest of a great blueberry pie recipe, I happened upon this scintillating cooking tip: Cake batter cooks well in a waffle iron.

Are you imagining the possibilities? Cake batter waffles surrounded by a topping bar. Think of it! Ice cream and syrups and chopped nuts and whipped cream. I'm going to have to think of an excuse to throw a party.

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And finally, credit goes to my dear husband for pointing this one out to me.

In Romans 8:16 we read "The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,"

This is not only an internal assurance for each and every Christian that we indeed posses a true faith, but it is also a legal requirement for establishing the truth of a matter.

Deut. 19:15

"One witness shall not rise against a man concerning any iniquity or any sin that he commits; by the mouth of two or three witnesses the matter shall be established." (emphasis mine)

In the Romans verse, Paul is describing the two witnesses that will testify to our adoption as sons of God. The first witness is the Christian, and the second is the Holy Spirit. And by the testimony of these two--the truth of the matter is established.

House of Bread

For any of you who have been following the Ruth Bible Study that I've been teaching over the past year, you know that there are several things in the book of Ruth that point forward to Christ and His work.

In fact, two whole sessions, numbers one and four, deal specifically with this topic. Session one, in a nutshell, deals with Christ setting us free from the curse of the law. Ruth, being a Moabite, was specifically marked out by the law for exclusion in certain areas. Yet, despite this, she is an ancestor of Christ. I'm afraid you're going to have to listen to the whole lesson (roughly 50 minutes long) to get the whole picture on this point, as I simply don't have the time to type it all out again for this blog. Email me if you want the link to the Ruth Study.

Session four draws some parallels between the law of the kinsman-redeemer, personified in the book of Ruth by Boaz, and Christ as our kinsman-redeemer. In fact, the kinsman-redeemer is probably one of the most significant themes in the whole book of Ruth. Sadly, the importance of the role of the kinsman-redeemer seems to get minimized in our desire to create a fairytale romance between a "beautiful" Ruth and a "dashing" Boaz. (Session six debunks this scenario, again, I don't have time to type all of that out here.)

But there is another little detail in the book of Ruth that is often overlooked in its significance. It can be found in the very first verse.

Ruth 1:1

"Now it came to pass, in the days when the judges ruled, that there was a famine in the land. And a certain man of Bethlehem, Judah, went to dwell in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons."

Notice that our story begins, and ultimately ends, in the sleepy little town of Bethlehem. Bethlehem is hardly famous as the setting of Ruth and Boaz's story, but rather for being the setting of another, more famous, story: the place where Mary gives birth to Jesus.

Before you let this detail go with a little, "huh, that's neat," and nothing further, let me tell you what the word Bethlehem actually means.

The literal translation for Bethlehem is "House of Bread."

OK, so what does that have to do with anything?

Perhaps I am making too much over a little connection I see between Bethlehem as the "House of Bread" and some of the events that unfolded there. I'll let you be the judge.

One would assume that if a place is named the House of Bread, then a great deal of bread must come out of there one way or another. And since we know that Bethlehem was a farming town, what with all of those fields that Ruth goes out to glean in and all that, this name seems to make perfect sense. But could there be more to it than that?

Remember that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. And consider what Jesus calls Himself in John chapter 6.

John 6:35

"And Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst."

Jesus, the bread of life, is born in Bethlehem, the House of Bread. Coincidence? Perhaps, but I tend to think there are few, if any, coincidences in Scripture. I think the name of Bethlehem had a double meaning from the beginning, but nobody would have realized it for a very long time.

Consider too the irony of Bethlehem, the House of Bread, at the beginning of the book of Ruth. A famine was consuming the land, and this in fact was the motivation behind Elimelech picking up and moving his little family to Moab, at which point Ruth, the Moabite, enters the story and ultimately, the lineage of Christ. The House of Bread was full of hunger.

But the bread of life, Christ Jesus, who was born in Bethlehem, the House of Bread, will erase all hunger forever.

Neat, huh?