“I don’t understand it.” Jim sat on the edge of the lumber pack and cracked open a Gatorade, tipping it up while his Adam’s apple bobbed. “Don’t understand what?” asked Daniel, leaning against the catwalk rail. “Don’t understand how Miles rose to the top that fast. I mean, we both started here stacking lumber three years ago and now he’s sitting in the air conditioning running the office and I’m still out here stacking lumber. I just don’t understand it.” Daniel grinned. Sliding an upended five-gallon bucket across the catwalk’s bar-grating, he sat down on it across from Jim. He opened his lunch box and removed a cookie and took a bite, then sat staring down at the cookie’s missing crescent with a half-smile. He looked up, one eyebrow raised. “You mean you really don’t know?” “No. I mean, he went right up the ladder and here I am still stacking lumber. He used to stand right there,” he nodded to a point about two feet from Daniel’s bucket, “and I was right here. Now I’m still here and he’s up there.” He jerked his head toward the gleaming office building. “I say… it doesn’t make a lick of sense to me.” Daniel took another bite of cookie and grinned. “Does the name Alfred Jenkins mean anything to you?” “Alfred Jenkins…” Jim stared down at his half empty Gatorade bottle. “I’ve heard it somewhere. Isn’t he… isn’t he like… one of the bigwigs that is associated with this place somehow?” Daniel grinned. “You might say that. He was the principal investor when this place started. He put up all the money to buy this land and most of the money for all this equipment.” He waved the cookie toward the line of forklifts and pay loaders sitting in the parking area. “Okay… what’s he have to do with Miles being in the office?” “Alfred Jenkins,” Daniel said, raising an eyebrow, “is Miles’ mom’s dad.” “What? Miles is Alfred’s grandson?” “You got it,” Daniel said, leaning back against the catwalk’s pipe handrail. “Make sense to you now?” “Does it ever!” Jim said, shaking his head. “The big money man’s grandson. Some people just have all the luck.”
*****
“He what?” “Aden Troyer is renting the Springer farm.” “But… but old man Springer wouldn’t rent that farm out to anybody.” David sat staring across at his married sister where she sat adjusting the foot of her Bernina sewing machine. “Why I’ve tried to rent that farm a dozen times. I couldn’t get past first base with the old man. ‘Not interested,’” he said with a shrug, imitating old man Springer’s gravelly voice. “‘It’s the old home place and I’m not letting it out.’” David shook his head and continued in his own voice. “All those times I asked him and then he turns around and lets Aden have it, just like that. What’s up with that?” His sister dropped the machine’s foot and leaned over to punch a few buttons on the machine’s face. She looked up, smiling sympathetically. “I’m sorry. I know you wanted that place. It would have been perfect, just down the road from Dad’s and all.” “Yeah, it would but… I just don’t get it. Why Aden and not me?” He sat staring down at a scrap of cloth he’d twisted around his finger. “Did you ever consider that this might not be about Aden and you?” “What else would it be about?” “That’s where it gets really interesting. It turns out that old man Springer has one grandson. A boy who’s in about fourth grade this year. He had learning problems. Dyslexia, some eye tracking issues, and some behavior problems that had his teachers wanting to put him on meds. Mr. Springer is pretty old school and was really opposed to putting his grandson on pills. Said he liked his grandson just the way he was and didn’t think rewiring his brain with drugs could do anything but cause trouble. He hunted around and found a local tutor. Someone with experience with dyslexia and therapy and was willing to work with him one-on-one outside a conventional classroom. It turned the boy around and Mr. Springer thinks that this tutor is a miracle worker. This tutor completely won over the grandson’s heart and his behavior issues have mostly disappeared. There’s just about nothing that Mr. Springer wouldn’t do for this tutor.” “Wait a minute…” David stopped twisting the scrap of cloth around his finger and stared at his sister. “You’re not saying…” “Yup,” she grinned and, repositioning the cloth, dropped the foot on it again. “That tutor is Aden Troyer’s aunt. So, when she approached Mr. Springer about that farm…” David snorted and tossed the cloth scrap onto the table and shook his head. “Say no more. Some people just fall right into it, don’t they?”
*****
A while back I was fascinated by a strange occurrence in Proverbs 31. In the middle of a long list of verses about the traits of a virtuous woman, is a verse that seems oddly out of place. Right between a couple of verses talking about her household not fearing the snow because they are so well dressed from her hard work, and just before it switches from talk about tapestries to linen, we get this one line. Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land. The jolt of seeing the husband included in a section about her cloth work, sandwiched as he is between tapestries and fine linen, makes one wonder what the author was driving at. I mean the husband isn’t mentioned anywhere else except once early on when it states he has no fears because she does him good and not evil. That makes sense to me. It is appropriate because this chapter is about her and the comment about him not fearing because she does him good is still clearly a statement about her character. But this verse is different. It appears to be about him. The city gate was the place the wise and honorable met to decide the serious issues of the day. “Her husband being known in the gates and sitting among the elders of the land” is a pointed comment about his community status. He is apparently an honored, respected man among men. Fine, but how does that belong in the middle of a passage about the virtues of his wife? This chapter is about her and it’s appropriate. Why drop in some passing reference to the husband’s community standing in the middle of all this? Is the author implying that her virtue is somehow the cause of this standing? This is where it gets interesting.
*****
That we find this odd, I think, says something about our view of the wife. And what is the correct view, anyway? We have to go back. Back and back and back. Way back, to the very beginning. We know this is the right response because this is what Jesus did when He was questioned about marriage. He said, “In the beginning it was not so.” So, we need to go to the beginning. And here in the very beginning we find this. And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. What does it mean when it says she is his “help meet”? Too many men, including some Anabaptist men, have interpreted “help meet” to be something along the lines of “daddy’s little helper.” We would never say that, of course, but actions speak louder than words. That is not what it means. The word “meet” simply means “suitable” and is merely a modifier for the word “help.” The Hebrew word here translated as “help” is the word “êzer.” It is used 21 times in the Old Testament and in the vast majority of uses, the “help” referred to is the almighty lord Himself. The lord is the “êzer” of His people. Suddenly all thoughts of the wife being a “helper” in the modern sense seem pathetically inappropriate. Something else is going on here. Something big. Given this, I think a more appropriate understanding of the word “êzer” would be “mighty ally.” God is not Israel’s “little helper.” He is their mighty (almighty) ally. It’s time to rethink this whole thing. What does God mean when He says, “I will make him an ‘êzer’ for him” and what does that have to do with Proverbs 31? Maybe everything. If a man truly has a virtuous wife, if she is his “mighty ally,” his divinely strengthening force, then he has all kinds of advantages over someone without an “êzer.” The advantages of this are likely to show up in real day-to-day life. With just a small shift in understanding, this all becomes clear. Let’s go back to the two stories we opened with. Remember Jim, sitting on that pack of lumber, trying to work out how Miles advanced from a lumber stacker to an office manager so quickly? It didn’t make any sense to him. At least not until Daniel pointed out that Miles’s grandfather financed the business. Then it made perfect sense. Whether it was strictly fair or not is beside the point. Suddenly it went from incomprehensible to completely understandable. Miles simply had a mighty ally in the top layer of the business’ decision makers. And remember David’s disbelief in Aden getting the Springer farm? Same thing here. Aden had a mighty ally in his aunt and the relationship she had with Mr. Springer’s grandson. The advantage of having a mighty ally is not a minor point. The outcomes are not even close. Viewed like this it’s not hard to understand. Let’s imagine we have five men, all about equal in character, talent, work ethic, etc. Two men have wives who love to spend their days shopping and sitting around, as much as possible anyway, in coffee shops and attending Tupperware parties. Two men have wives who stay home but spend as much time as possible reading their favorite novels, and one man has an “êzer.” Which man do you think is most likely to end up “known in the gates where he sitteth among the elders of the land?” So, what’s the problem? Are there only a few virtuous women around these days? Possibly, but I have another theory. But first… a story I once read.
*****
The boy wanted the car. Wanted it worse than he had ever wanted anything. He dreamed about it at night. He stopped by the car lot every time he was in town. He had the price memorized. His friend’s dads had bought their sons cars when they turned sixteen. Surely, he’d get one too. He had let his father know just which one he wanted, and what it cost, many times. He couldn’t sleep the night before his birthday. When he came to the table for breakfast, he found his present. As he tore away the wrapper, he found… a Bible. Disappointment flooded over him. “Read that, son,” his dad said, “and you’ll receive the desires of your heart.” The son nodded, but he was barely civil about it. He ate little. Taking the Bible to his room he tossed it into a box where it remained for many years. Bitterness filled his heart and his relationship with his parents eroded away. Many years later, as an old man, he was going through a box of old stuff and he found the Bible. His parents were dead. He was alone. Slowly, he flipped through the old but unused Bible. Something caught his eye, and he paged back to it. A slip of paper tucked between the Old and New Testament. He pulled it out, turning it toward the light for his failing eyes, gripping it in his shaking fingers. It was a check dated the day of his sixteenth birthday and made out for the exact amount of his dream car. What he wanted was with him, just within reach, all the time. He just didn’t utilize it.
*****
This, I think, might be closer to what is actually happening. We have lots of women who would love to help their husbands… and lots of men who will not ask. An “êzer” is a terrible thing to waste. Some men will hire business consultants, bring in lean manufacturing experts, and pay top dollar to attend leadership conferences under big name leadership gurus. They spend massive amounts of money to implement complicated marketing strategies all the while ignoring their wife’s input. “But,” you say, “she doesn’t know anything about my business.” Ignoring for the moment that this is an ignorant way to run what is supposed to be the most intimate relationship on earth, I would like to look at something that might not be so obvious. Many major breakthroughs often come from a perspective outside the field they revolutionize. Major engineering breakthroughs have come from non-engineers. What we often fail to realize is that being an expert in a field means that the expert is already hemmed in by the knowledge and conventions of that field. The expert can’t approach a problem with a clean slate because he already knows too much about what can’t be done. The idea of using steel to reinforce concrete was solved by a man in France making concrete pottery when he started imbedding wire to hold it together. There was absolutely no reason to believe it would work. Any expert could have told him every substance expands and contracts at different rates. Imbedding steel in concrete was almost guaranteed to fail the moment the temperature changed. Except it didn’t.
Darryl Derstine lives in Holmes County Ohio with his wife and 7 children. If you have questions about stewardship and gifting, or to request a copy of this article, you can reach Darryl or one of the CAM Foundation team at bss@camoh.org or 330-893-4915. Read more articles on our website at www.camf.org.
