May God bless your journey
Working Out Our Pain with Faithful Compassion
Ruth 1:6-15
6 Then she arose with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the fields of Moab that the Lord had visited his people and given them food. 7 So she set out from the place where she was with her two daughters-in-law, and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah. 8 But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go, return each of you to her mother’s house. May the Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me. 9 The Lord grant that you may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband!” Then she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept. 10 And they said to her, “No, we will return with you to your people.” 11 But Naomi said, “Turn back, my daughters; why will you go with me? Have I yet sons in my womb that they may become your husbands? 12 Turn back, my daughters; go your way, for I am too old to have a husband. If I should say I have hope, even if I should have a husband this night and should bear sons, 13 would you therefore wait till they were grown? Would you therefore refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, for it is exceedingly bitter to me for your sake that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me.” 14 Then they lifted up their voices and wept again. And Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.
15 And she said, “See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.” [1] Version[1]
The witness and reality of living a life of hope, even in the face of trials, is a powerful thing.
Naomi sets out for home, but her example and life made her daughters-in-laws want to remain with her. Even through the pain and suffering they still wanted to be with her.
Maybe it was her Faith through loss that drew them. She stayed faithful to God after losing her husband and sons. Maybe it was her example of faith to stand firm while losing everything valuable to her. Naomi had not only lost her family but her homeland as she found herself in a nearby nation away from home living in this new land. Maybe it was her example to live in faith not swaying from her beliefs and traditions. Naomi continued to follow the Scriptures and the traditions, staying faithful to be sure that she returned back to Israel as soon as possible, even without her husband or sons to guarantee her protection or provide for her.
She released her daughters-in-law to return to their homes, so that they could seek new husbands. It was tradition for a woman to marry the nearest relative or kinsman of her deceased husband. However, a family could release a woman from the commitment, which is what Naomi offers both women. She has no guarantee of any family back in Bethlehem after the drought had moved people from the land. She had how way of knowing what she was going back to, or if there would even be any relatives to care for her. Instead of drawing them into this unknown with her she released them to go in hopes of having a future provided in a new husband and family from her home town.
Naomi also may have been trying to protect the woman from possible judgment from being foreigners in her homeland. The Moabites were shirt-tail relatives of the Jews, but even this difference in tradition and how they worshiped may have caused some people to pass judgment upon them as they moved into Bethlehem.
Pain Can Skew Our View
Sometimes when going through pain it can cause us to lose focus and we can miss God and responsibilities to others and to ourselves. We can get lost in pain and hurt and forget to be decent to those around us. We can forget to live life and instead see only pain and fill our lives with hopelessness.
Naomi had every right to be in sorrow and pain. She had every right to shut the door and close out the world. Who could blame her if she just wanted to stay under the covers and try to ignore the world. However, she remained faithful God, herself, and others around her.
She trusted that God would care for her but had no desire to draw others into her painful life. Instead, she tried to encourage the best for her daughters-in-law to go and seek a blessed life with their own people. Unlike so many who get lost in their pain, Naomi seems to have the faith to keep care for others in her mind. She continues to put others before herself.
We can easily get lost in our pain, but having faith in God can help us to face the times going through our own pain, grief, and suffering. In God’s grace and strength, we can find our strength to love others through the pain and not destroy others in our hurting. This is not easy, but in grace God can help us.
Hope Through Suffering
When you lose everything, it can cause you to lose hope. This may seem difficult when everything is out of control or in total chaos. However, God speaks to us if we can slow down and listen to His spirit.
More than once in our lives we have been knocked back nearly to ground zero. We had lived in one home for nearly five years, and we were seeking start a work for God. Our jobs were going fairly smooth, but the ministry was going slow. We knew the time to pull back had come, and while we saw that the timing was off for pushing our ministry, our comfort and enjoyment with our home and community was good. We were in the process of adoption, and we had hoped for a second child for years. Everything seemed to feel like it was a good place to remain and just wait for God to open a new door into the community. However, in a few days’ time everything came to a screeching halt.
Becky came home and told me that she had lost her job, which was the greatest source of income for our family. The area we lived in was going through a tough economic period and jobs were not easy to come by. My own work was limited, and hours were very light, and we couldn’t live on the pay. Everything fell apart around us. Within a matter of hours and contacting the agency we were fostering and hoping to adopt through, our foster child was moved since we were going through all of this.
My wife, son, and I sat at the table together facing the harsh situation we were in. We hadn’t lost faith, and we prayed together about our situation. We asked God for guidance in our time of prayer. Then, as the Bible says, “out of the mouth of babes” our then eleven-year-old son spoke up. He just rationally said, “God has always helped us, and our family is always there for us.” We knew at that moment the wisdom of those words and we asked God to guide us. A week later we had listed our house for sale, in a slow economy. We were packing a moving truck and moving three hundred fifty miles to my parents’ home.
Going backward was hard, but there was peace in knowing God had a solid place for us to land. We had only been there a week when the Realtor called to tell us that he had a buyer. We had hoped to pay off the house loan, and he got us an extra two thousand dollars to help us through a few months between ministries. This past experience has helped the two of us some twenty years later to face the closing of a church and needing to find a place to land. We once again find ourselves at ground zero and back home. Peace still gives us strength, because God’s spirit continues to guide us each step of the way.
The circumstances we find ourselves in will constantly change, but knowing we serve a God who’s love and grace never fail us is a solid foundation through any circumstance. It is this attitude that Paul stands on in writing to the Romans, “we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance character, and character hope” (Romans 5:3-5). We all have access to this same God of hope.
Naomi understood the hope in the eternal God of provision and strength. Paul, the apostle who was ran out of many towns, imprisoned for his faith, and left for dead still speaks of hope, growing not from ease, but through suffering. We have the entire Bible and thousands of years of faithful believers to stand firm upon.
What will you do today?
Today, how will you respond to this understanding of God’s power and the hope of faith? What are you facing that you need to lay down at the foot of Christ and trust Him with today? I encourage you to give your burdens to Him and ask Him to help you to see hope through the circumstances.
May God bless you today on your journey with Christ, through the woods of this life.
[1] (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ru 1:6–15.
The Holy Bible: English Standard
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