Ruth 1 - Gloom & Despair Not the End

If God were to write your story, what would He say?  Some people who are struggling might think that God has abandoned them or that He is treating them harshly. As we open the book of Ruth we see poverty, emigration to a foreign land, intermarriage to women out of the nation of Israel, death and more death. The story has a grim start. Naomi even changes her name to Mara because she has become bitter against God. He has taken her husbands and her sons and her only means of security. She returns to Bethlehem a broken woman. 

When hard times come for us it is easy in the moment to think that God is punishing or perhaps has removed His blessing from our life. It is far too easy to allow circumstances to overwhelm and to make us bitter. We call out to God, but rather than relief we see another anguish coming our way. 

There is no way I could get into the head of God, but I can look at how He has dealt with people from the pages of scripture and see that sometimes harshness is a result of correction for losing faith in God and placing it in ourselves or idols of the world. In the case of Naomi, I think that God is sustaining her through these hard times because he is in the middle of writing her story. It is a story where God will get the glory and be forever memorialized in the line of our Savior. They don't know it now, but Naomi and Ruth would become ancestors of David the King of Israel and the man after God's own heart. Through whom Messiah would come to save the nation. 

Our own trials and hardships may very well be the tools God uses to chisel us and to write His story in our lives. We are the clay, He is the Potter. In the middle of trials and hardship, don't give up and don't give into bitterness. We can't see the end, but that doesn't mean there isn't one. Our greatest hope is for the day when we are completely one in Heaven with no pain and no sorrow. Today we have sorrow and it may just serve a purpose. 

I believe that if Naomi could have seen the end of her story, she would have found the courage to bear up bravely under her conditions anticipating better things to come. We don't know what lies at then end of our journey even today. Let's keep our hope and trust in God that He will write a wonderful story with our lives. He loves us so, and His story created in us gives the world a glimpse of the hope they can have if they will just look to the Lord for their salvation as well. 

If you are enduring hardship, keep the faith and look to the source of your hppe. If your life is going smoothly, it is then when we can be an encouragement to others. 

May God richly bless you as you seek Him and as you serve Him.