The Good Portion

It was her childhood home, the place where she married her husband and gave birth to two sons. After ten years away, she was back in Bethlehem of Judah, with nothing but a young foreign woman at her side. The townspeople struggled to put a name to her changed face. Her name was Pleasant, Naomi, in Hebrew. The sound of it alone made people smile. If names were prophetic, hers was a blessing. But now, here in Bethlehem, after all these years, and after everything she had lost, her name sounded like a cruel joke.  She begged them, “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full, and the LORD has brought me back empty.” Ruth 1.21-22a In those days, judges ruled Israel and the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes. When the people turned their backs on God, He would bring war or famine until they cried out to Him again. During one such famine Naomi's husband took his family to sojourn in Moab, the land of their ...

I’ll admit that 2017 has not been one of my favorite years. This year we struggled through months of grueling heat, insect infestations, neighborhood deterioration, political upheaval, an empty nest, anxiety, and crippling discouragement. But it was also the year of my 10th Anniversary trip with my wonderful husband, Paul. We toured Hearst Castle, as we did on our honeymoon. We fell in love with a little village called Cambria. We stayed in Koreatown, feasted on Greek, Oaxacan, and Georgian food, and feasted our eyes on all the great art we could find at the Crocker, the Huntington Library, and our happy place, the Getty Center.  It was also the year Paul began a job that has changed his life for the better, the year he took up watercolors and became an artist, the year I sold my first artwork since I was in my 20's, and the year that forged a few new friendships that will likely last for the duration of our lives. Too often, I would say, we look for big miracl...