As was their custom on the feast of Pentecost the Knights of the Round Table gathered with their king at Camelot and regaled each other with tales of their adventures over the past year yet none took his seat until a new adventure had presented itself. And so it was that they not only looked to the past but cast their eyes ahead into the unknown yet eagerly awaited future.
My childhood copy of the tales of those knights and their kings contains several chapters that begin that way. As an early reader I was unsure where the idea of Pentecost came. Only to find out as an adult that it was a day fifty days after Easter that marked the beginning of the church. And to learn later that seven weeks after Passover comes the feast of Shavuot. The feast of the barley harvest and more importantly of the renewal of the covenant on Sinai with God’s people.
One of my favorite Bible stories is the story of Naomi, Orpah, Ruth, and, eventually, Boaz. Boaz comes in to the story late, after Naomi and her two daughters-in-law become widows. Orpah stays in Moab but Ruth and Naomi trek across a famine-struck terrain to Naomi’s home town, Bethlehem. There they encounter, notably on the threshing floor, Naomi’s cousin Boaz.
The future becomes brighter; indeed Ruth becomes great-grandmother of David… and so this little family becomes the root of the royal family and indeed the holy one.
We might tend to look back as these ancient women might have; might have stuck with safety, as Orpah did; but we might also take a page out of their (four-chapter) book and look ahead.
Not a bad lesson for this spring day.
JRL+
Helen Cohn. "The measure of a people." Keeping the Faith, Home + Life, Arizona Daily Star. Sunday, May 9, 2021. E3.
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