I have the privilege of contributing to He Reads Truth, a website of whose purpose is “To help men become who we were made to be, by doing what we were made to do, by the power and provision that God has given us to do it, for the glory of Jesus Christ.” They do this by providing scripture reading plans accompanied by reflections that can be accessed for free online or purchased as print books. For those of you looking to engage scripture in a fresh way – either because you are dried up or have been away from it, these studies/plans will refresh your soul and engage your mind.
What follows is one of the pieces I wrote on Ruth. You can find the full plan HERE.
Ruth 1:19-22, Ruth 2:1-3, Job 27:2-6, Philippians 3:8-11
Many things can make us bitter against God. A job loss, a failed marriage, a church split, broken relationships, the death of a loved one, illness. When we experience these, we often think God should have fixed it. He should have helped.
He could have saved us but He didn’t. So we become bitter. We think ill of Him and speak ill of Him. We shake our fists and curse Him under our breath, and sometimes even reach the point of rejecting Him all together.
In Ruth 1, we see Naomi and Ruth experiencing loss to an extreme degree. They are left with no husbands, which, in that culture, meant no security and even no identity. They were on their own, destitute and lost. So Naomi declares her new name to be Mara, which means “bitter.” For, she says, “God made me bitter. He brought me back empty” (Ruth 1:21).
Like all good stories, though, this one has a twist. It is a twist on our understanding of “bitterness.” Mara doesn’t reject God. She doesn’t shake her fist. She responds more like what we see from Job; though God made her bitter, she did not lose her integrity, give up on following Him, or speak ill of Him. Her bitterness was one of pain and brokenness, but not one that lacked faith. She knew God was God and clung to Him regardless. We see this in her response to Ruth.
Ruth was, in many ways, a fruit of Mara’s pain. She was a reminder of loss. Yet Mara claimed her as a daughter. When Ruth sought her permission to go and find a means of livelihood, Mara blessed her on her way, saying, “Go, my daughter.” This small phrase shows both love and hope.
Mara loved Ruth and kept living life. Her bitterness did not steal her capacity for feeling, for faith, or for life. It was not the bitterness we so often picture. Such a response to suffering echoes Paul’s words in Philippians 3, where he says he “considers everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ” (3:8).
Suffering hurts. It brings bitterness to the soul, but that bitterness does not have to rob us of life or faith, even if it robs us of happiness. We can still love, we can still follow, we can still live.
And notice one more thing. When Mara (Naomi) responded to her suffering this way, something extraordinary happened; the door was opened for Ruth to meet her redeemer, Boaz. And, through meeting Boaz, the plot was set in place for the Redeemer of the world to be born – the Redeemer of whom we say we everything is loss compared to knowing Him.
