The Real Field of Dreams
One Man Wants to Bring the World’s Greatest Love Story Back to Life, Here’s Why We Should Help Him…
Nachum Pachenik is an amazing man who happens to live in, and in fact on, one of the most amazing places on earth.
If you stand on his back porch, you can see Bethlehem — ground zero for the story many Christian families are sharing today — watch him visit with his Palestinian neighbor who owns a vineyard just a few feet away, and most significantly, enjoy an incredible, from-the-earth meal while talking about the most fantastic love story ever told… while looking at it.
You may have read this verse from the Book of Ruth many times.
Take a second. Read it again.
Ruth the Moabitess, said to Naomi, “Please let me go out to the field and glean grain behind anyone in whose eyes I may find favor.” Naomi said to her, “Go ahead, my daughter.” So Ruth went out and gleaned in the field behind the reapers. She just so happened to be in the field of Boaz, who was from Elimelech’s family. Soon after Boaz arrived from Bethlehem, he said to the harvesters, “Adonai be with you.”
This, is THAT field. It’s THE field of Boaz.
Nachum, his family, and 30 or so other families live in an Israeli settlement called Sde Boaz, the real-life location where the story of Ruth and Boaz actually took place. As I’ve told many friends, going here didn’t just change my life, it changed my heart.
Nachum and his family are special people to say the least. He was born in a settlement, his wife grew up on a kibbutz. They are warm, welcoming, spiritual, grounded people who will open their home and offer hospitality like you’ve never seen.
He and his wife have one of those “you can’t make this up” kind of real-life love stories you never forget when you hear it. Maybe he’ll tell you about it. After hearing this story — and spending several hours with his family one evening— he revealed another layer, his bold vision to bring another love story back to life.
“I want to plant wheat in this field,” he hold me. “And then, we want to harvest this wheat and take it through the whole process to make bread right from the field, as in the original story of Ruth and Boaz.”
While my mind was churning on that, he hit me with the bigger idea.
Nachum wants to stage a huge festival for Jews, Arabs, Christians — all-comers — and to, for the first time in untold thousands of years, reenact the story of Ruth and Boaz. Then, to follow it up celebrating with bread made right from the field of course, followed again by food, wine, music, and dancing.
If you’re still with me, you are thinking what I’m thinking: a celebration of untold spiritual proportions.
So, when Nachum asked, “Will you help us?”
I didn’t even hesitate, “Yes. I don’t know how, but yes.”
And I remembered the iconic Kevin Costner movie from my youth, though in a funny twist this is Israel, not Iowa. But — like in the movie — it’s hallowed ground, and for sure someone is going to ask, “Is this heaven?”
It all started with planting a seed.
“What’s the first step?” I asked.
“We need to raise enough money to plant seeds in the field, and we go from there,” Nachum told me urgently.
Every holiday season, I make it a point to try to bless people with a gift that will be meaningful to them. But that plain fact is, for most Americans, getting more stuff is a momentary thrill at best. So instead, I took the money I would have allotted to “stuff” and sent it to a very special foundation that is directly supporting this effort, The Gush Etzion Foundation.
(If you decide to give more, we won’t stop you)
Today, I sent a note to some special folks in my life and told them that this special undertaking, sewing seeds on the field of Boaz, would be my gift to them this year.
I’ve heard many a pastor over the years talk about “sowing seeds” or “sowing into the ministry” which often refers to financially supporting a particular church or cause. Supporting good work is compelling, to be sure, but when do you actually get the chance to sew actual seeds into and in fact on actual ground in The Holy Land?
That’s the opportunity Nachum gave me this year.
Where it goes I just don’t know, but I can’t wait to find out. I’ll keep you posted.
So she gleaned in the field until evening. When she thrashed what she had gathered, there was about an ephah of barley. She carried it back to town, where her mother-in-law saw what she had gleaned. Ruth took some out and gave her what was left over after eating her fill.
Her mother-in-law asked her, “Where did you glean today? Where did you work? May the one who noticed you be blessed!”
She told her mother-in-law with whom she had worked and she said, “The name of the man for whom I worked is Boaz.”
So Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “May he be blessed by Adonai who has not stopped his kindness to the living or to the dead.” Then Naomi said to her, “This man is closely related to us, one of our kinsmen-redeemers.”
Then Ruth the Moabitess said, “He even said to me, ‘Stay close to my workers until they have finished the entire harvest.’”
Naomi answered her daughter-in-law Ruth, “It is good, my daughter-in-law, that you go out with his female workers, so that you will not be harmed in another field.”
So she stayed close to Boaz’s female workers, gleaning until both the barley harvest and the wheat harvest were completed.
