Life has a way of surprising us! No matter how well-intentioned and planned we are, life has a way of reminding us how little control we actually have. This blog post is all about the things we may have planned for, the things we desire, the things we may have lost and learning how to navigate our emotions in the midst of all that.
I’m focussing on the book of Ruth for this one. The main character starts out as Naomi. Naomi’s life was going good. She was married, they had two sons and when there was a famine, her husband led the family out from Bethlehem to Moab. I suspect that she was dutifully submitted to her husband and his plans for the family to ride out the famine in Moab, build a life there and at some point perhaps return to Bethlehem. At that time, having a husband and sons was a great surety in knowing that as a woman you were protected with a legacy of a man to look after you and protect you.
Then life happened. What happened? Naomi’s husband died. Tragic, absolutely tragic. Naomi has now found herself in a foreign land with no husband, and responsibility of her two sons. At some point, the sons marry local Moabite women. I’m sure this is of some consolation to Naomi, that despite her grief, her family is still somewhat in tact. Her growing family were living in Moab for some ten years. She probably found some strategies to manage the grief of losing her husband, and was settling into her expanded family dynamic with her two sons and her daughters-in-law. It seems almost cruel that life dealt Naomi another blow; Both her sons died. Now, in this foreign land she is alone with none of her original kinfolk and two daughters-in-law. How absolutely devastated and isolated must Naomi have felt inside. Then she heard that the Lord had returned to her homeland Bethlehem to provide food: The famine was over. Naomi decided to go back to her homeland. She tried to bid her two daughters-in-law goodbye. She had no sons so in her mind she had nothing to offer them. She was older and even with the best of plans if she had found another husband and married, any children, particularly sons would have to grow old enough for the daughters-in-law. That plan was long. Too long. Orpah eventually left, but Ruth refused to leave Naomi’s side. She went with Naomi to Bethlehem. The bible says when they went to Bethlehem, the town was stirred because of them, and people recognised Naomi and called her by her name. Naomi however was so struck by the magnitude of her loss that she decided to allow the pain of that season to define her. She told the women not to call her Naomi, but to call her Mara because “The Lord has afflicted me”. This is Lesson 1.
Lesson 1: Everything is temporary and life is full of seasons. We must not go defining our identity based on temporary situations. Yes, it’s painful and yes Naomi could see no way out now. She was no longer of child-bearing age, her husband had passed, as had her sons. In her mind she must have been thinking, what could possibly change for the better? This is the problem when we become comfortable and assured in our own plans and think we can figure everything out according to human ‘wisdom’. We think we have it all sussed out, but then life happens and suddenly we feel like the rug has been pulled from under our feet. We are in a position when nothing feels sure or comfortable. But one thing we must always remember, no matter what it looks like, as long as we are submitted to God, we can be assured that He is guiding our path and has in His own way and in His own time prepared our next chapter. God had providentially arranged for the time of Naomi’s return to Bethlehem to coincide with the time of the beginning of barley harvest. Trust God’s timing, no matter what it looks like. And definitely do not go defining yourself after a painful season. No matter what that season is, whether it is grief, or trauma, or loss. Whatever it is, our God is bigger than that event. God calls us His masterpiece for a reason. He sees us as the finished product and has allowed life’s seasons to refine us (sometimes by fire) to shape us to become the best versions of ourselves, which is how He sees us. We must not get stuck in a temporary event or season and define our identity by it. Note how Naomi has all this ‘Mara’ talk, but the bible doesn’t even pay her any mind – The bible continues to refer to her as Naomi. That’s God’s grace. Our words are powerful, but God is more powerful. Don’t speak termination of your life according to the growth process, because that’s all it is, an event in the process. It’s not final. The season that Ruth and Naomi have just walked into in Bethlehem was barley harvest.
The barley harvest was the exact requirement for the next phase of God’s plan to come into play. Ruth told Naomi that she will be heading out the field to pick up the grain behind anyone in whose eyes she found favour. Lesson 2. Do something.
Lesson 2: Do Something Productive! Don’t sit there in your unfortunate circumstances and wallow. God says faith is NOW. Now when we find ourselves in situations that we’d rather avoid, we must take action that would help us to meet our needs, and the next best step. Not only that, but as God’s Ambassadors we are to go out expectant and confident in the knowledge that God has already prepared our path. Ruth didn’t go out with a negative mindset. She went out expecting that God will provide someone in whose eyes she’d find favour to help her meet their needs for ‘daily bread’. We cannot just sit around ‘waiting for God’. We need to get out there with a positive mindset trusting that as we take the first step, God will provide the ‘ram’. And so He did. Ruth was noticed by Boaz. Who is Boaz? A man of status. A man with resources. We need to trust God that as we walk in faith, He will be faithful to reveal how He has planned to us provide for us at our point of need. Boaz not only noticed Ruth, but she found favour in his sight. He instructed his staff that whatever she needed, grain, water whatever, that they were to ensure she had it and not cause her any trouble. Now let’s pause. We are talking about a family that just lost everything close to them. Two women alone, vulnerable. Loss so overwhelming that Naomi lost her identity in it. To the human mind, no conceivable way out. BUT GOD! When they took steps of faith to meet their needs, God met them on the path and provided the resources and divine connections. Dr Martin Luther King said that faith is taking the first step when you don’t see the whole staircase. This is exactly the walk of faith with God. You have got to move. Ludacris said ”when you move, I move just like that!!”. When we move by faith, God moves to reveal how He already provided for us – But we have to take ownership of our faith moving by making the next best move! Next Naomi gave instructions to Ruth on how to secure Ruth’s future to try and ensure that she is provided for. This right here is Lesson 4.
Lesson 3: Have a servant’s heart. What is a servant’s heart? A heart that is focussed on serving the needs of others. A heart whose focus is not ‘self’ but self-less – less of self and more of service. Ruth went out to find food to serve her mother-in-law. Then, somewhere in the midst of her grief, Naomi recognised Ruth’s need for a life beyond what she could provide. Naomi took the focus of what she didn’t have and served Ruth by giving her some advice. She gave Ruth instructions on how to interact with Boaz. As a true servant, Ruth followed those instructions, and that put in motion the wheels of change. In Ruth 3:11 Boaz says to Ruth that he will do all she asks of him. If that isn’t favour i don’t know what is! When Ruth went back to Naomi she reported all that had happened, and Naomi responded ‘the man will not rest until the matter is settled today’. This is another important point: be careful from whom you take advice. Ruth didn’t just follow advice from Naomi because she was titled ‘mother-in-law’. I’m sure she followed the advice because she had spent years observing Naomi’s heart and character both as a person and also toward her. Based on that she was able to discern good fruit and wisdom and love. I suspect that was a large part of why she followed Naomi’s advice. We must be discerning from whom we give access to our ears and hearts. Look for fruit in their lives (is the advice they’re giving working for them?). Also look for the Fruits of the Spirit, don’t rely on titles alone for this is how you may be deceived.
Lesson 4: Trust God’s Timing. God has a way of doing things that we just could not have foreseen. I’m pretty sure that when Naomi gave Ruth those instructions, she didn’t exactly know how the conversation that needed to take place would come up. Naomi told Ruth to wait until Boaz slept. How are you suppose to find talking opportunities in sleep time? Yet in Ruth 3:8 the bible says ‘something startled the man; He turned and there was a woman laying at his feet [Ruth!] God knows how He is going to make something out of nothing to ensure destiny is fulfilled. We don’t need to worry about every single detail. All we can do is ‘having done all, is stand [in faith]’ Ephesians 6:13. There has to be a point when you’ve done all that you can, and then you have to stand in faith and leave room for God to act. And look at how God made Boaz notice Ruth – something startled him. Ruth thought she was being slick suggesting to Boaz that he was the Kinsman Redeemer of the family, because likely in her mind, that conversation would lead to both her and Naomi being looked after. After all, Boaz is a man of resources and she has found favour in his sight! Simple right? Yet Boaz responds that there’s actually someone more closely related to them to redeem them back into the family and look after them. This is one of those heart-sinking moments. You think your newly concocted plan is working, and then a spanner gets thrown in. Now Ruth might have had racing thoughts about who this other person is! Will he be as nice and kind as Boaz? Who knows? God. Because He arranged that the next morning just as Boaz went to sit down at the town gate, the Kinsman Redeemer that they just spoke about the night before came by at that exact moment! Ruth 4:1. Don’t ever EVER for a second allow the enemy to convince you that your circumstances are beyond God’s power. Is anything to hard for God? (Jeremiah 32:27). This bring us nicely into lesson 5.
Lesson 5: Trust God’s Plan. So now Ruth now has the opportunity for her thoughts to go wild. Who is this man who has the right to redeem her back into the family to become her husband? She may well have wanted security for the future, but i’m sure she wanted peace also and the kind of peace that i’m sure she imagined all day that Boaz could provide! This is the thing. When we entrust our lives to God, we have to trust that He has already worked everything out for our good, just as His Word says (Romans 8:28). God made sure that in Boaz he had a perfectly positioned learned man. Boaz had affluence, he knew how the law worked, he knew how the Kinsman Redeemer would likely think, and something suggests to me that he wanted no margin for error or backtracking in this important conversation; So Boaz ensured that he gathered the elders to serve as witnesses. Boaz explained to Mr Kinsman Redeemer that if he didn’t want to redeem Naomi’s land, that he, Boaz would be next in line. And in the sight of the witnesses Mr Kinsman who had the right to redeem Naomi’s land stated that he’d take up his right and redeem it. He seemed to have quite a portfolio of land that was worthy of protection. In fact so much so that when Boaz highlighted the fact that by redeeming the land he’d have to take responsibility of redeeming Ruth as part of the package, the kinsman backtracked all the way back. He said “Then I cannot redeem it because I might endanger my own estate”. Mr Kinsman Redeemer didn’t know Ruth. If he had any knowledge of her, he would have realised there was no risk. But that wasn’t God’s plan. So in all her goings out, God made sure that Ruth was covered from Mr Kinsman’s knowledge. God’s plan was to ensure that the one destined to redeem Ruth had all the necessary intel to joyfully make that decision to redeem her. The bible already stated that Boaz told Ruth that he’d already heard all about her from the first time they’d met – How she served Naomi since the death of her own husband and even left her homeland to stay with Naomi after all that. He thus knew that Ruth’s character was one of loyalty and faithfulness (Ruth 2:11-12). He knew that he who finds a wife finds a good thing. He was not about to play when it came to redeeming her, and God made sure that Boaz was appropriately positioned throughout that entire process to ensure that he was well equipped all round to redeem her at the right time, which he did. He redeemed Naomi’s land, and took Ruth to be his wife according to the rules (Ruth 4:13).
God’s Plan: Ruth 4:13 says after Boaz took Ruth to be his wife, ‘The Lord ‘enabled her to conceive”. This bit jumped out at me! Ruth 1 states that her two sons and her respective daughters-in-law lived in Moab for 10-years. Life back then wasn’t like life now. People were not about career-chasing ambitions. Women had babies and they had them without delay. The fact that they were married ten years and had no babies lends itself to the prospect that God shut up Ruth’s womb so that Ruth could bear no children whatsoever to Naomi’s son. It wasn’t God’s plan for Ruth to have babies by Naomi’s son. So this puts more context into the loss and vulnerability of their situation in Ruth 1. From a mindset of man it may have felt like God took Naomi’s husband, and took her sons and in all those ten years of Ruth’s marriage not even a child, especially not a son who could take on the responsibility of caring for the family – Was it all a waste of time and years culminated in sadness? NO!
Here’s why: God had a plan. Naomi and Ruth were divinely positioned in God’s master plan. He didn’t want Ruth to have just any child. He wanted her to have a son. Yet not just any son. When God ‘enabled her to conceive’ she bore Boaz a son. Yet not just any son. Ruth and Boaz were the parents of Obed. Obed as in the father of Jesse, and the grandfather to King David and therefore a very important part of the lineage to our Saviour Jesus Christ.
Lesson 6: God’s Plan For Your Life Is Divine. In closing I encourage you to set down any anxieties you have. Life may not be going the way you want it to, or even planned or expected it to. I know that feeling well, very well in fact. But we have a clear example here (one of many in the bible) of how God uses every part of our life journey to fulfil His plan and purpose. No experience, no matter how sad it feels, is wasted. It’s all for our good. We cannot get stuck on disappointing events or sad seasons. Yes we can feel the emotions, that is what they are there for, to feel. What we cannot do is submit to those emotions. Cry, weep, sleep whatever, but after a sensible while get up and be about God’s business by re-focussing your thoughts back into alignment with God’s Word. Lend your ear to wise counsel and take the next best step in the circumstances. And of course, all the while definitely Trust God throughout the process. His plans are for your good. And trust God that one day it will all make sense.
Be encouraged
x
Kingdom Minds 