HEBREW WORD STUDY – FAVOR – RATSON  רצן Resh Sade Nun 

Psalms 30:6; “For His anger is but for the moment, His favor is for a life time.  Weeping may tarry for the night but joy comes in the morning.”

Today is News Years Eve.  You tend to reflect on things in the past year and for some reason I am reflecting on one of my most favorite passengers on my disability bus who passed away. His name was Rudy. If you could get by his gruff exterior, which many could not, you would find a sentimental elderly man with a heart of gold.  Once a week he would go to the bowling alley where he bowled with a bowling team. Rudy was 89 years old and was still bowling a good 120 per game.  He assures me he used to do much better than that and he was just not sure why his game was been off.  I wanted to say it was off by 20 years but I did not have the heart to say that. Aside from his weekly bowling date he attended church every Sunday, serving as an usher and walked to the supermarket twice a week.  He walked there which is why he went twice a week, a weeks groceries was just too much to carry home.

He always wears a button on his shirt or suit, even when he went bowling. It was the size of a campaign button only the picture was not of some politician but was an old faded picture of his wife.  The picture shows a very attractive woman with the hairdo of the forties or fifties. She was wearing gobs of lipstick like women wore in those days.  Rudy said that this picture of his wife was taken a couple years after they were married and before he was shipped overseas to fight in the Korean War. 

One day I was returning him from his bowling he has rose with him and asked if I could stop off at a cemetery on the way home.  I had a pretty light day so I agreed.  He wanted to visit his wife or her grave. It was their 69th wedding anniversary.  However, his wife only made it to their 62nd anniversary before she passed away from cancer.  Rudy wanted to wish his wife a happy anniversary and give her a rose, something he did on every anniversary. It was a time of reminiscing so I let him talk.  

He told how he and his wife used to always go bowling together and that she was the better bowler.  They also loved to go roller skating together and continue to go when they were well into their twenties not caring that they would be skating with a rink full of teenagers.  In fact they worked part time as guards on the skating rink and during intermission they and the other guards would put on a show doing tricks and having a speed skating race.  At the conclusion the manager would lower the lights and Rudy and his wife would go to the center of the ring where they would put a spot light on them and they would do a slow dance together on skates while the Wurlitzer would play, “I Don’t Want to Walk Without You.” This was such a hit that they did this week after week for years. People would look forward to watching Rudy and his sweetheart do the slow dance to the Wurlitzer.  Many a young girl would berate her boyfriend later that evening for not being as romantic as Rudy.

When we arrived at the cemetery Rudy assured me he would only be a minute and I assured him to take all the time he wanted. He then ask: “Play it and turn the volume up.”

I took my IPOD and queued it up to Harry James playing: 

I don’t want to walk without you, baby,

Walk without my arms about you, baby.

I thought the day you left me behind,

I’d take a stroll and get you right off my mind,

But now I find that I don’t want to walk without the sunshine,

Why’d you have to turn off all that sunshine.

Oh baby please come back

Or you will break my heart for me,

Cause I don’t want to walk without you no siree.

Was it a vision?  I would swear for a moment I saw a Frankie in his twenties slow dancing with a beautiful woman wearing a 50’s style hairdo and gobs of lipstick

As I watched Rudy visit his sweetheart, I could not help but think of Psalms 30:6 where we learn that His anger is but for a moment.  The word anger in the Hebrew here is aneph which does not have to be rendered as anger.  Aneph comes from a Semitic origin of a camel snorting.  A camel may snort when it is angry, but is will also snort when it is frustrated or sad. Aneph is simply an expression of some emotion and the context it is used will tell you which emotion to use.  I don’t believe anger fits this context, I would say it is more of frustration or disappointment. His disappointment is but for a moment.  The word favor in Hebrew is ratson which means to delight or take  pleasure in and this  is for a lifetime.  The word lifetime is chayim which is just the word life.  His favor or delight and pleasure is life giving. 

Weeping may tarry for the night but joy comes in the morning. Night is ‘erev which is really a reference to evening. The next word is lun which means to lodge as in a one night stand. It is used when you are on a journey and you spend the night at an inn or motel. It is not a permanent residence, just a stop over.  Weeping or sorrow is just a stop over it is not permanent.

Then joy comes in the morning.  There are a number of words in the Hebrew for joy, this one is ranan which in its Semitic root is the twanging of a bow string.  It is the sound a bow string makes when an arrow has been released and the archer can now relax. I have a friend who has some experience in archery and said that it takes a lot of strength and endurance to pull back on the bow and hold it in place as you aim.  Once you release that arrow you feel a sense of relief and relaxation. 

As I listened to Rudy tell his stories, lay his rose by his beloved’s grave and listened to him sing along in his deep baritone voice with Harry James rendition of I Don’t Want to Walk Without You, for the first time I understood the word ranan. It was morning for Frankie and he had let that arrow of grief and sorrow fly and now he felt a release, a joy over the memories of the days when he did not walk alone but walked with beloved and basked in the joy of her ratson, pleasure and delight.

This is the third New Years Eve after Rudy’s passing. Rudy and I talked about God and I know he loved God with all his heart as did his sweetheart. I don’t know why I think of Rudy at this particular time of year. Maybe it is the picture of Rudy and his sweetheart slow dancing together under a spotlight in an old fashioned skating rink like it was a New Years celebration.

Maybe it is because New Years is a time of new beginning an when I think of new beginnings, I think how three years ago heartbroken  Rudy was reunited with his sweetheart in heaven and are now dancing a slow dance together knowing they will never again be without each other.  For you see, for Rudy, joy really did come in the morning. 

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