Have you ever read in the Bible the book of Ruth? It is a wonderful true story, desperate in the beginning, turning tragic shortly thereafter, but in the end, opening like a flower into the greatest love story ever told.
In chapter one, we come upon the scene to find a husband, wife, and two sons leaving their homeland of Bethlehem during a famine to find sustenance in the foreign country of Moab. Sometime after their arrival, the husband passes away. His two sons, coming of age, each take a Moabite wife. After a period of ten years, they too depart from this earth and with their deaths leave the women in their lives in dire straights. (For in those days, to survive, women were totally dependent on the men of the family.) Not knowing what else to do, the matriarch decides it would be best to return to her homeland. Along the way thinking about what would be best for her widowed daughters-in-law, she tries to send them back to their kinsmen. One returns but the other insists on staying. Thus the story about Ruth, the one who remained, begins.
Most of the time, because the book is titled after her—and rightly so—complete focus is on what happens to Ruth, how she meets her future husband, Boaz, and the eternal significance of that meeting and their future love. (Jesus’ lineage comes through the marriage of Ruth and Boaz.) As beautiful, pivotal, and monumental that is for all mankind, lately my heart has been thinking on Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law. What happens to her—the hopelessness and utter desolation of loss—is all part of her story. It, too, is one of love, but of a different kind.
You can only imagine how she must have felt when leaving all she knew to follow her husband into the unknown. Anxiety, excitement. Misgivings and expectation. All mixed together in the hope of a better life.
When we first meet her, she is Naomi. And then, the shoe falls. Her husband dies, but all is not lost for she still has her sons. But then the other shoe follows, leaving her heart filled with a loneliness that is almost unbearable. What glares back at us then—when she gathers what is left of her life to go back home to salvage some kind of existence—is the bitterness that has taken hold of her heart. For she now calls herself Mara, which means bitter. “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty….”
At this point in the story, we may agree that God has dealt very bitterly with her. While we might not say it outright, we could think or subtly bring home the point, that what has happened is probably deserved.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, we might offer up the silver lining pep talk. Good, will come from this. God’s got it covered. Don’t worry. It will be alright in the end. While all those statements are true, somehow they make the hurt run deeper.
What struck me is that in the text there is no mention of either judgement or misplaced words coming from the Lord. What we do see woven between the lines of the story is not God’s rebuke for Mara’s feelings of bitterness, but glimmers of His love.
In His love, He gave her a daughter-in-law,
~ Who cherished her and the memory of her son, enough to stay with her.
~ Who, when all seemed lost, would cry with her as she wept.
~ Who could hold onto hope when she could not.
I’ve often wondered why Jesus wept when Lazarus died. (See John 11.) There could be so many reasons. Weeping because of the unbelief Lazarus’ two sisters, Mary and Martha, were still living in. Weeping for the hardened heart of so many who wouldn’t believe the many miracles they were witnessing. Or perhaps, the simple explanation was He was weeping with His friends because He loved them. They were hurting, and He was there for them.
Maybe that’s where we need to be.
In His love,
Kimberly
“Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” -Romans 12:15
