Day 28

Ruth 1-4

THE EMPTY SURPRISE

I went out full, and the LORD has brought me home… empty – Ruth 1:21

What do you say to a woman who leaves home because of a collapsing economy, crosses foreign borders, and loses her husband and two sons to death in a land of failed opportunities?  Sometimes it’s best to let the bereaved do the talking:  The hand of the LORD has gone out against me…Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara (Bitter) for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me…the LORD has testified against me, and the Almighty has afflicted me.  These are hopeless words, and they are the futile expressions of a woman of faith.  Despite her misery she had not lost her faith.  She had to say what she said.  She served a God that wasn’t supposed to allow things like that to happen.  Yet, life could only come out of her own broken dreams and dead plans.

            Naomi was so fractured she feared her burdens would be too grievous for her surviving daughters-in-law.  Orpah returned to her people and her gods, but Ruth made a different decision:  Your people shall be my people; your God shall be my God (1:16).  Through her losses and sorrows Naomi’s God was still there.    Even when her speech belied her belief, Naomi wanted her God.

            Sometimes God has to empty us to fill us.  Misfortunes, however unpleasant, are always God’s opportunities.  Naomi didn’t return home empty; she returned with a daughter of Moab who would bring new joy to a heart that knew no song.  Ruth became the wife of wealthy Boaz who redeemed the land and inheritance of Naomi’s deceased husband, Elimelech.   Ruth not only married into money.  She married into destiny.  Naomi would have never known God as a restorer of life and a nourisher of…old age if she had not suffered her aching, throbbing losses.  She had to come back empty in order to be filled.

            The grandson that Naomi held in her bosom became the grandfather of King David who was the forefather of Jesus our Messiah.  Talk about full.  The whole world has been filled because of Naomi’s emptiness.  We who know Jesus are the fullest of all.

By the way, Naomi means pleasant.  God turns bitterness to pleasantness.