Daily Devotional • Februrary 25
A Reading from Ruth 1:15-22
15 So she said, “Look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.” 16 But Ruth said,
“Do not press me to leave you,
to turn back from following you!
Where you go, I will go;
where you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people
and your God my God.
17 Where you die, I will die,
and there will I be buried.
May the Lord do thus to me,
and more as well,
if even death parts me from you!”
18 When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more to her.
19 So the two of them went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they came to Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them, and the women said, “Is this Naomi?” 20 She said to them,
“Call me no longer Naomi;
call me Mara,
for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me.
21 I went away full,
but the Lord has brought me back empty;
why call me Naomi
when the Lord has dealt harshly with me
and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me?”
22 So Naomi returned together with Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, who came back with her from the country of Moab. They came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.
Meditation
For Naomi, it is one disaster after another. Though the whole town of Bethlehem, her hometown, was stirred when she and Ruth arrived, she testifies only to how the Almighty has wronged her. It is a common story. As a pastor, I heard such agonizing complaints many times. People’s expectation of how God should have treated them was not how things played out. For some, this leads them to leave God altogether; for many others like Naomi, now Mara, they see themselves as a victim of a God who had caused them to suffer, or ignored them when they were at their greatest need.
Naomi has even denied her own name and taken on another as a witness to her new self-image. Yet experience also teaches us something powerfully transformative in similar circumstances; it is the lesson that Job gives us. “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). Stick with it. We know that good parents challenge their children to deal with the hard side of life; coaches drive their athletes and make them strong. We do not criticize such persons for being cruel. We know that their hardness is a particular expression of love which drives the beloved to become strong.
Naomi/Mara will come to learn that as she presses through her anguish. God rarely causes suffering, but when it happens in a fallen world, he can make saints. There are signs already of the rare blessings that will be Naomi’s, though she hasn’t perceived them yet for what they are. Orpah, whose name means “dark cloud,” like a sky overwhelmed with heavy rain clouds, has returned to her people, never to see her mother-in-law again. But Ruth, whose name means “loving companion,” speaks the most famous words by which she is well known. Her relationship with her mother-in-law must have been strong, a great blessing, assaulted but not overcome by the three deaths.
David Baumann is a published writer of nonfiction, science fiction, and short stories. In his ministry as an Episcopal priest, he served congregations in Illinois and California.
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Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer
Today we pray for:
St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, St. Louis
The Diocese of Madurai-Ramnad – The Church of South India (United)
