littlebylittlemore

Last week when I was typing my first blog post, it was snowing outside. It was beautiful to sit at my kitchen window and watch. Everything was clean and white. Everything was calm and quiet. Today as I type, I look out at my bare trees in the backyard, and it’s hard to believe that in just a few months there will be blossoms and new baby leaves starting to grow. I see the muddy frozen ground outside and long for the days when the grass will be green and lush beneath my bare feet. Don’t get me wrong, winter obviously has its moments of beauty, but by the middle/end of this season it becomes increasingly difficult to look past the bleak and seemingly endless darkness and to imagine the lightness of spring. Before I know it, though, the view out my window will look so differently than the landscape of winter that I see now.

During my Bible study homework this week, the author asked us to read the book of Ruth just for kicks and giggles. She didn’t ask any questions or probe the issue at all, but I’m so glad that I took the time to read the story again. Ruth is only 4 chapters long, and it is 1 of 2 books in the Bible named after a woman. I’ve read the story of Ruth before, but as is true with any time I read the Bible, there were parts of the story that I had never noticed before or even considered. I thought it would be fun to share some of the things I’ve learned. If you haven’t ever read the story of Ruth, I would challenge you to go find it and read it. It’s one of my favorites!

**Originally, I was trying to fit all of my notes about Ruth into one blog post, but as it kept getting longer and longer, I decided it might be better to break it up a little and spare anyone who braves reading this. (#yourewelcome). This first post, I will focus mainly on the beginning of the story of Ruth. **

There are three main characters in the book of Ruth: Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz. The story takes place during the time of “the Judges” in Israel, which basically means that the Israelites were in their cycle of following God, getting complacent in their worship of God, assimilating into the culture around them, becoming negligent and sinful, being punished for it, crying out to God for mercy, and then starting the cycle all over again. The first chapter sets the stage for the story by telling us that there was a famine going on. As a result of this famine, a certain Israelite man(named Elimelech) from the Bethlehem area took his wife and two sons to live in another pagan city called Moab. Sadly, he dies and leaves his wife Naomi as a widow. Her sons grow up and each married a Moabite woman- Orpah and Ruth. All seemed okay until Naomi’s sons both die as well. Now Naomi is not only a widow, but has lost her two precious sons. Needless to say, all three women are completely devastated. Naomi hears that the famine is coming to an end back in her homeland of Judah, so she decides to head back to her relatives there. She tells her daughters-in-law to go back to their families and customs because she has nothing left to offer them. In verse 9 of chapter 1, I noticed that the women must have had a very close bond because it says Naomi kissed the girls and then they all lifted up their voices and wept together. Orpah decides to go back to her family, but the Bible tells us that Ruth clung to Naomi. This makes me think that Naomi and her sons must have lived out their faith in God to some extent in the pagan culture because Ruth seems to be drawn to it. She says in verse 16, “Do not urge me to leave you… For where you go, I will go. Where you sleep, I will sleep. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”

I think it is so important to connect well with the beginning of this story, because it makes the ending of the story that much richer. In the past, when I have read this story or heard it, I don’t think I fully understood the true devastation these women must have felt. A famine encompasses more than just “there wasn’t food”. Literally everything and everyone is affected! There is an increase in sickness and death-in both the people but also the animals. Water sources may be scarce or even become contaminated by dead bodies. It becomes harder and harder for people to find work to earn what little food or services are available. Entire people groups and villages have been wiped off the face of the planet in times of severe famine. These women were right in the middle of a time like this. And although we don’t know exactly what caused the death of Naomi’s husband and two sons, I can almost guarantee it was famine related. Another thing to consider is that women in this time were not esteemed the same as men, so when these women lost their husbands they also lost their social standing, their main source of income, most likely their home, and their purpose. Also keep in mind that neither Orpah nor Ruth had conceived any children yet either. This could also have been a huge worry for these women at that time because one of the main responsibilities of a wife was to bear and care for the children. In both the Israelite’s and the Moabite’s culture it was often viewed as a “curse” from God or their gods if the woman couldn’t get pregnant. Literally, these three women had lost everything.

Let’s take a minute to talk about Naomi. Naomi’s name means “Pleasant”. We’ll see later in chapter 2 that she really must have been a pleasant woman because that is what her reputation was with the people she grew up with when she goes back to Bethlehem. She followed her husband to a new and pagan city without complaint in the middle of a famine. She helped start a new life there, even with those different customs and beliefs. Then, after her husband died, she finished raising her sons while in that foreign land. When the sons got married to women from that area, she still kept her family closely knit and continued to remember who their God is. (Some people might argue with me here that Naomi’s sons married into the pagan culture even though God had told them not to, so they couldn’t have been that strict in their beliefs. That’s a valid argument.) I am just going off of what I read at the end of chapter one, that Ruth wants to cling to Naomi and follow her God. Ruth completely rejects her upbringing and commits whole-heartedly to Naomi’s. Naomi must have been a positive role model somehow of the One True God to Ruth.

In chapter 2, the story continues with Naomi and Ruth returning to Bethlehem around the beginning of barley harvest(try to remember this for part2). News spread pretty quickly that Naomi had returned with her foreign daughter-in-law. Then the whispers started. It was obvious right away to the people in Bethlehem that their pleasant friend Naomi had changed. I don’t think that it was just because she had been living in a foreign culture and maybe looked different in dress, so much as that I think Naomi’s grief and heartbreak was so intense that it must have changed her physical appearance and countenance. Tragedy can do that. It can add years to a persons face by making hair go gray, adding wrinkles and dark circles, taking away pounds or even adding them; it can strip the light right out of someone’s eyes; and it can leave a person bowing their head with shame, guilt, or pain. The women of the city seem shocked when they ask, “Is this Naomi?!” (Which is basically just another way of saying, “What happened to you?!”)

Naomi responds to them, “Do not call me Naomi (pleasant), call me Mara (bitter) because the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full and the LORD has brought me back empty. (vs20-21)” Naomi points her frustrated and angry finger directly at God saying that HE is the one that had done this to her. She originally left feeling full (full of what? Hope. Full of God’s Word and promises. Full of faith), and came back completely empty (anxious, broken, lost, and defeated). Naomi finds herself in a season of winter in her soul. She struggles to see past her blind rage and grief and to see the hope of a God at work- even when she couldn’t see evidence of it.

Have there been times in your life when you could relate to Naomi? Have you felt like everything you had dreamed of and hoped for was completely ripped away from you? Or have you ever had moments when the news you just received literally felt like a kick to the gut and it took your breath away? Have your insides ever felt so knotted and broken, that it actually changed your demeanor and physical appearance? Or maybe it hasn’t happened to you directly, but have you ever heard about or experienced something so tragic that it made you question everything you believed and turn your anger towards God? There have been times in my life where I have cried out in desperation,”Why God!? Why did this happen? Why would You do this? Why didn’t You prevent it and why then don’t You fix it? Where are You?!”

The brokenness of this sinful world chewed up the pleasant Naomi and spit her back out as a bitter woman. But do not lose heart, the story of Ruth is not finished and certainly, the story is not over for Naomi either. In fact, it is just beginning. What Naomi can’t see yet is that God is still at work. He never left her side. Just as the trees in my back yard aren’t dead-even though they certainly look that way now, someday soon new life will break free from those cold branches when spring comes. How can I be sure of this? Because of precedent. I have no reason to doubt that after centuries of spring coming faithfully to this area, it suddenly won’t come at all this year. God faithfully does the same for Naomi by taking those dead branches of her life and grafts in something more wonderful than she could ever have imagined for her family. Just wait and see!

I want to leave you with something to think about. When I read this story or others like it, I am inevitably reminded of some of the doubts and insecurities I have as a Christian. I think we all have times that we wrestle with hard questions. The one I wrestle with here isn’t so much why do people suffer in general. It’s more why do God’s people suffer? Why do Christians have trials and Why doesn’t God spare us more?

There isn’t a simple answer, but here are a few reasons I’ve found over time and through several sources that have been a help.

1. To glorify God and bring about His ultimate plan
2. To discipline for known sin
3. To prevent us from falling into greater sin
4. To keep us from pride
5. To build our faith
6. To cause growth
7. To teach us obedience and discipline
8. To equip us to comfort others
9. To prove the reality of sin in us and its very real consequences

Some could argue that when Naomi’s husband left Bethlehem and went to Moab, he was running afraid and not trusting God to provide. And that somehow as a consequence, he ended up losing his life. Or that that maybe when his sons married into the pagan culture and disobeyed God’s directions not to do that, they too had to reap the consequences of their sins. I think it is all just circular thinking because ultimately there was a famine and LOTS of people died. Many of them God’s people. Many of them not God’s people. It was a horrible circumstance as a result of this world being broken and full of sin. The world needs to be fixed, and God is the only one who can and will ultimately fix it. Our problems here on earth can be big, but God is bigger. Things may be hopeless to us, but God sees the purpose in it. We may be angry and blame God for it all, but God is not shocked. Despite our anger, He continues to comfort us. He continues to bring about His good. Over and over again, we see God picking up the pieces of peoples’ broken lives and molding them into stories of His hope and His power.

One last thought that hopefully brings some semblance of comfort as we wrestle through BIG questions like this one is to remember that God’s own Son, Jesus, was not spared from affliction. He endured poverty(2 Cor8:9), temptation (Hebrews 4:15), betrayal (John18), grief (John 11:35), and great suffering (John 19). We have a Savior who sympathizes with us in our trials and pain. Isn’t that good news? But do you know what the best news is? Jesus doesn’t just sympathize with our suffering, He made a way for us to overcome it. He came to this world to defeat sin, and He did. He paid the ultimate price for our sin: death. He died in our place, so that we can be free to live with Him. Though we will still experience pain and suffering in this life just as a side-effect of living on this planet, we have an eternal hope. No matter what comes our way, we are not alone; and one day, we will finally be with Him- face to face. All our tears will be wiped away. There will be no more pain and no more suffering. All that is wrong will be made right.

I’ll end this post here. Hopefully you’ll be anxious to hear more on the story of Ruth, so you’ll tune in again next time. And also, I hope I’ve given you some new things to ponder. Little by little winter turns into spring. And little by little, our faith can grow as we spend time in God’s Word and thinking about what we truly believe.

Blessings,

Karen