Still trying to digest this mornings devotional and reflect on this exquisite story. Getting excited about something I have heard many, many times in my life yet heard from others perspectives brings new meaning to this unique SEASON in the life of the women mentioned in the book of Ruth.So many timely truths, yet such a dark depressive time in history. So many circumstances in the narrative that could apply to our continuum in life.
Amidst all the chaotic time in Israel’s history and the moral fabric of Israel unraveling a focus on three women in a culture dominated by a patriarchal system sets the drama.
A dramatic move to Moab is initiated by Naomi’s husband, relocating for a SEASON of time in a land that was hostile toward their own people, until his untimely death.
Precipitated perhaps by this turn of events and feeling the stress and pressures of loosing, not only her husband but also her two sons in a culture that depended on the head of the household to provide and protect, she makes a dramatic move back home, with a daughter-in-law that wants to minister to her and travel back with her.
Upon arrival back home, Naomi responds with negativity toward the circumstances that God allowed to happen. From her perspective every security in her life has been taken, for all intense and purposes she had lost hope and resorted to bitterness.
From her perspective one could imagine the feelings of despair, loneliness, anger, fear, and anxiousness about the events unfolding in her life, changing her name to reflect her life.
The daughter-in-law responds with love and a resolve to care for her and be there with her and to minister to a person in this condition.
Yet, the question stands: “How do you combat feelings of bitterness?”
Try not to stay in that frame of mind.
Count your blessings.
Go over who God is.
Contemplate on what God has been trying to do in your life.
God uses us in spite of our decisions.
God’s redemptive mercy finds those in greatest needs and with incredible joy, praise, and hope, uses this family illustration of how God intervenes to set the stage, establishing a genealogy through pagan women of redemptive quality in the eventual story leading up to the birth of Christ.
How is God setting the stage in your life?
Are you studying the Word because you want to understand God’s character?
While interacting with God’s Word do we submit to change? Do we see God working in this narrative as well as our own stories.
We look forward to more adventures in the book of Ruth through our monthly devotionals at our AD Support get togethers.
"Isn’t it interesting how bitterness even affects our physical well-being and our countenance and our appearance?
ReplyDeleteThere are lines of hardness and anger and bitterness that for some reason, I think, show themselves on our faces as women more than men do." ~Nancy Leigh DeMoss
"Naomi was hardly recognizable. She had been gone ten years, but she was an adult when she left. You would think she would still be recognizable when she got home.
But I get the sense here that her bitterness had aged her much more than ten years. Now, she’d been through a lot. She had suffered a lot.
But you know, ultimately, what we have to realize is the outcome of our lives is not determined by what happens to us. Rather, it is determined by how we respond to the things that happen to us.
Naomi had suffered a lot. She had lost her husband. She had lost her sons. She was left alone in the world with just this widowed daughter-in-law. She had suffered."~Nancy Leigh DeMoss
For Ruth, to have stayed in Moab would have been for her to take the pathway of convenience and comfort. You may be unintentionly saddled with the care of a loved one and long for that pathway of convenience and comfort but perhaps you are not given that choice or luxury and God places you in the role of care giver. Determine to minister, determine to take up the challenge, determine how you should respond. II Tim.4:17
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