When I was a little boy, I remember one year my heart was set on getting a special toy for Christmas. It was a space station set and it was very cool. More than anything I wanted to find it under the tree on Christmas morning. Besides the station proper that had several levels and rested on a lunar-like surface, there were special shuttles, much like those on Star Trek. The shuttles even shot little plastic missiles. Plus there were lunar rovers and dozens of astronaut figures. I was constantly day-dreaming of how I would play with it. I wanted that space station so bad!
Do the rest of you “old people” remember what it felt like to be a kid and want something like that?
Well, I made sure my parents knew how I felt about this toy because it seemed to me that they had some sort of “in” with Santa, so…
- I dragged them to the department store and showed it to them.
- I told them how much I would enjoy having it to play with.
- I promised to be a perfectly-behaved little boy if I could only get that space station for Christmas.
Then I counted the days until December 25th. Time seemed to drag by and when that day finally did dawn I eagerly unwrapped my presents expecting to find that space station. But, I didn’t. Instead I unwrapped some new underwear and socks, and a model of a Saturn 5 rocket, which was kind of cool—but not near as cool as that space station. Plus my little brother Matt dropped the rocket down the stairs the next day breaking it into a million pieces. It was a very disappointed Christmas, to say the least.
One thing I have learned as the years have passed is that life is full of these kinds of disappointments, tough times that are much more serious than not getting some silly toy. I mean, there have been lots of times in my life when I have “unwrapped” something I didn’t want; something that brought disappointment and even pain. For example, I’ve “unwrapped” relational disappointments that broke my heart; financial disappointments that nearly broke my bank account; I’ve unwrapped medical diagnoses for myself and loved ones that weren’t what I wanted to hear, and I could go on. How about you? How many of you have had a time when you “unwrapped” something in life and you didn’t get what you wanted or expected?
In this week’s reading, chapter 9 of THE STORY, we studied the life of two women who “unwrapped” some serious disappointments and their experience can teach us how to get through our own tough times. If you did your reading you know I’m referring to Ruth and her mother-in-law, Naomi.
Now, as you read through this little book in the Bible, you may have asked the question that many have asked over the years, namely: “Why is RUTH in the Bible?” I mean, it doesn’t read like a book of the Bible. In fact, it reads more like a novel. Plus, the story it recounts comes during the time of the Judges, the period Bobby told us about last week, but it’s not a story about a judge. It doesn’t even seem to be about the nation of Israel per se. No, at first glance, it’s just a story about a family, a family of no importance especially, no prominence or special significance. A family that goes through a lot of disappointing, difficult times, and everybody does that, so why is the book of Ruth even in the Bible? Keep that question on the back-burner. We’ll get to the answer later.
And, regardless of whether not we think it belongs in God’s book, Ruth’s narrative has been called the most charming short story in the Old Testament. Even people who are not believers have enjoyed reading this tiny book of the Bible. When Benjamin Franklin was United States Ambassador to France, he occasionally attended The Infidels Club, a group that spent most of its time searching for and reading literary masterpieces. On one occasion Franklin read the book of Ruth to the club members, but he changed the names in the text so it would not be recognized as a book of the Bible. When he finished, they were unanimous in their praise. They said it was one of the most beautiful short stories that they had ever heard and demanded that he tell them where he had run across such a remarkable literary work. It was his great delight to tell them that it was from the Bible, which they professed to regard with contempt, and in which they felt there was nothing worth reading! Anyone who has actually read the Bible, read God’s STORY, knows that is just not true!
Let’s review this story from THE STORY. It’s about a husband named Elimelech whose name meant “God is my king” and his wife Naomi whose name meant, “pleasant” or “sweet.” That name seems to capture Naomi’s life early on. In fact, later in the book she describes her early life as “full,” or completely happy and satisfied. In fact, I’m sure that’s how Naomi felt on her wedding day, as she and her husband stood and committed their lives to on another. There was no doubt a lot of excitement and anticipation on her part. It looked like Elimelech and Naomi would “unwrap” a life where they will live happily ever after. Then two sons were born and you can imagine their joy!? Naomi’s life was FULL indeed!
Okay, let’s pick up the story at this point. Take your Bibles and turn to the book of Ruth. Follow along as I read chapter 1 verses 1-17.
1 – In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab.
2 – The man’s name was Elimelech, his wife’s name Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahon and Kilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there.
3 – Now Elimelech, Naomi’s husband, died, and she was left with her two sons.
4 – They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After they had lived there about ten years.
5 – Both Mahlon and Kilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.
6 – When she heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of His people by providing food for them, Naomi and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there.
7 – With her two daughters-in-law she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah.
8 – Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the Lord show kindness to you, as you have shown to your dead and to me.
9 – May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.” Then she kissed them and they wept aloud
10 – and said to her, “We will go back with you to your people.”
11 – But Naomi said, “Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands?
12 – Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me—even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons—
13 – Would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord’s hand has gone out against me!”
14 – At this they wept again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law good-bye, but Ruth clung to her.
15 – “Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.”
16 – But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God, my God.
17 – Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.”
As you just heard, at one point in the marriage of Ruth and Elimelech, things started going downhill. Their “happily ever after dream” began to fade. There was a famine in the land and it went on for a long time. It was so severe that they could no longer stay in the Promised Land.
Now, I think it’s hard for us to imagine a famine like what they experienced but I’d like us to try to at least personalize this a bit so here goes, and by the way, I am indebted to Kyle Idleman of Souteast Christian Church in Louisville for much of the backround I’m sharing):
Imagine your husband comes home from work one day and you can tell it’s not been a good day. He’s had bad days on the job before but this time things look different. You try to talk to him about it but he doesn’t want to. He just kind of sits in silence at the dinner table. He turns on the TV but he’s not really watching it. And then finally that night as you lay in bed in the darkness, he says, “They let me go at work today…part of job reductions.” You say all the right things to him. You say, “Don’t worry. Things will get better. This won’t last. Things will turn around.” But they don’t. Six months later you’ve depleted most of your savings. You’ve sold your car and have moved out of the house into an apartment. Two years pass, and now it’s not just affecting your family but the whole region. Everyone seems to be impacted by this. Your biggest concern is what you’re going to eat for the next meal. When you look down at your children as the sleep in their beds you wonder how you’re going to provide for them. Finally your husband says, “We can’t stay here. We are going to have to move. We’ve got to try something different or we’re not going to survive this.”
This is what happens to Naomi and her husband. They get to the point that they have to move. They have to go somewhere and try something. The family will starve if they don’t. So hearing that the famine is not in Moab and that the ground there is very fertile, they decide to relocate there, and we have to understand what that would have been like for them. Remember, the Promised Land was and integral part of THE STORY! In fact, as Jews it was part of their identity. Each family had a piece of land designated to them in the Promised Land that would be passed on from generation to generation. So, they wouldn’t just leave their piece of land. It’s part of who they were. It must have been absolutely desperate for them to pack up and move. And Moab, the people of Moab were the descendants of Sodom which means it was a very pagan culture. Because of this, in Moab there was a lot of prejudice against the Israelites. After all, these people in Moab were the sworn enemies of God. So Elimelech and Naomi had to be desperate to move there. It wasn’t an easy decision.
I think as they left Naomi thought, “Well, you know, I’ve lost our home, our friends. But I’ve got my husband! He’s a good man and he takes care of us. And I’ve got my two boys. They’re healthy and strong. And, I’ve got my God. I’ve got my faith. So, with all this, I’m okay—even moving to Moab.”
But when the get to Moab Elimelech get’s sick and he doesn’t get better. He becomes weaker and weaker and eventually he dies. And here Naomi is, a single mom, a widow, in Moab, this hostile country, trying to raise two boys. It would not be unlike a citizen of today’s Israel living in PLO territory.
Well her sons grow up and fall in love with two Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. And they get married and it seems like a great day! Two weddings, finally some good news for Naomi! But these two weddings are quickly followed by two funerals. There was no time for grandkids to be born. So after losing her husband Naomi loses both of her sons. So she’s experiencing incredible GRIEF. Edgar Jackson defines GRIEF like this. He says:
Grief is a silent knifelike terror and sadness that comes a hundred times a day when you start to speak to someone that is no longer there.
Grief is the emptiness that comes when you eat alone after eating with another for many years. Grief is teaching yourself to go to bed without saying ‘goodnight’ to the one who has died. Grief is the helpless wishing that things were different when you know they are not and they never will be again.
I know that some of you know exactly what Jackson is describing. You know loss. You know disappointment. You’ve lost a spouse and have felt the “silent knifelike terror and sadness” of grief firsthand.
I think you may have heard that my mom’s sister, my Aunt Wee, died about a month ago. She and my Uncle Sonny were married 63 years and mom told me this week that he says he just can’t go home to that empty house so he’s visiting his kids and grandkids. He told mom he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to go home. It’s just too hard. Well, that’s the kind of grief Naomi was experiencing. And some of you don’t know what this is like yet, but you will because none of us are exempt. If this kind of grief hasn’t come you can be sure that it will.
A widow from Louisville, Kentucky, named Millie Renner has written a poem to describe her own experience with grief. It’s called “Broken” and it goes like this:
“Do you see that pile of woodchips on the floor?
That’s what is left of the life I had before
When I was loved by you with all your heart
When passion awoke and played its part
Our oneness in purpose, agreement and thought
Is something that could not be bartered or bought
It seemed to be perfect, to have Heaven’s blessing
Each word, gaze, and touch was a form of caressing
I never had known such love before
Now all that remains is that pile on the floor
It looks to others like I’m doing all right
They don’t see the woodchip of crying at night
My family and friends think I’m doing okay
The woodchip is hidden of my struggle each day
So many chips in that pile on the floor;
Emptiness, loneliness, disappointment and more
Dreams unfulfilled, plans hung in midair
Love uncompleted beckons imaginings so rare
My life has been broken, nothing fits anymore
There’s this big pile of woodchips in the middle of my floor.”
Well, this is how Naomi felt. That’s all that was left, just a pile on the floor of broken pieces. She had “unwrapped” a lot of pain in her life. She thought her marriage would be a happily after ever after thing. She thought there would be grandkids all over the place. She thought she’d live in the Promised Land, but no.
Well, after losing everything, she decided she really didn’t have much choice but to go back home and just hope that things would be better in her small town. So, she told her two daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah, “Look, you stay here. You’re young women. Stay in your homeland of Moab. You have time to remarry and have a family but I have to go back.” And Orpah agrees to stay, but Ruth refuses to leave Naomi. She says to her mother-in-law, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you from me.”
These words may be familiar to you because you’ve heard this text read in weddings. It’s popular, traditional, for brides and grooms to say these words to each other at the end of their vows, but if we were to be Biblically accurate, in wedding ceremonies the bride would turn to her future mother-in-law and say, “Where you go, I will go…” I kind of doubt that this kind of tradition will catch on, but that’s what was happening here on the road back to the Promised Land. It reminds us that Naomi must have been a wonderful mother in law indeed because there is a very special relationship that has formed between her and Ruth.
The Bible says that “When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.” So Ruth and Naomi make a difficult journey back to Naomi’s hometown, a place called BETHLEHEM, and at this point we start to understand WHY this story is in the Bible. Back then Bethlehem was a town of less than 200 people and so when Naomi returned it was big news. People started to talk and say, “Is it her? It doesn’t look like her. Is this Naomi?” Now, remember, her name means, “pleasant” or “sweet” so they were saying, “This person looks like Naomi but she doesn’t seem to be pleasant anymore. Her sweet glow has faded.” And Naomi must have heard this rumor because she says, “Don’t call me that name any more, because God has made my life bitter, not sweet…I went away full, but the LORD had brought me back empty. The Lord has afflicted me. The Almighty has brought misfortune on me. My life didn’t ‘UNWRAP’ as I thought it would!” So, think about it; Ruth, a new believer in God, has gone from being a part of a large, happy, God-worshiping family, to being a young widow alone with an embittered mother-in-law. But in fairness to Naomi, we should note that she had good cause to be concerned about her situation.
These two women were in just about as dire a straight as women could be in that male-dominated age, for to be women alone without men was to be faced with ruin. There was no social security in those days, no safety net, no source for any kind of future if a woman didn’t have a man in her life. In those days, as Naomi alluded in verse 12, a woman without a man was a woman without hope.
Well, the two women arrived in harvest season and this offered a way for them to earn some money. You see according to God’s instructions, wealthy farmers were required to let the poor glean the field. They could legally follow behind the harvesters to pick up scraps of grain they had missed.
When I was the youth pastor at First Baptist Damascus, a family in our church that had come from Redland, the Luthers, invited our young people to glean their corn fields as a funds raiser.
We gathered everything we could find, which was a lot, and the Luthers used it to feed their cattle. They paid us the going rate for feed and we put that money toward our summer camp cost.
I remember it being very hard work, lots of bending over, heavy sacks to carry, that kind of thing.
Well, Ruth convinces Naomi to let her go do this back-breaking work but, understand this was not only hard work it was dangerous work, for Ruth that is. Remember Bethlehem was a small town so everyone would notice a stranger like Ruth. They would be able to tell that she was a pagan Moabite. It would have been obvious. It would be like a Muslim woman wearing a Burka as she picked up leftover corn in a farmer’s field in Iowa. I mean, if they had “homeland security” back then, people in Bethlehem would have been dialing the number saying, “We have a terrorist in the corn field! Send help!”
Well, God protected Ruth. You see, as it turned out Ruth unknowingly chose a field owned by a relative of the father-in-law she never knew, Elimelech, Naomi’s deceased husband. This relative’s name is Boaz and when he learned who Ruth was, he showered her with kindness. He invited Ruth to glean all she wanted and to drink from the jars of water he provided to his workers and he warned his men not to lay a hand on her. He even told his workers to deliberately leave a little extra grain behind so that Ruth wouldn’t have to work so hard. Ruth was stunned because she knew her status, and when she rushed home to tell Naomi about Boaz and his kindness, the older woman began to taste hope for the first time in a long time. She saw that God could have a happy ending in store for both of them so she took on the role of a Jewish matchmaker straight out of Fiddler on the Roof. Naomi told Ruth to clean herself up and splash on some perfume and put on her best dress. She instructed her daughter-in-law to head over to Boaz’s place that night and play the part of Cinderella. She was to wait until “Prince Charming” finished eating and went to bed. Then she was to sneak in and lie down at his feet and cover herself with his blanket. Now, don’t worry, it isn’t as seductive as it sounds. Ruth’s behavior was actually a respectful, nonverbal way of conveying her availability and interest in marriage.
She was not throwing herself at Boaz or propositioning him. As Idleman says, “She was being more ‘bold and beautiful’ than ‘young and restless.’” It was custom back then. Well, Boaz woke up in the middle of the night and was startled at the sight of the gleaner he had befriended camped at the foot of his bed so he asked what was going on. She said, “I am your servant Ruth. Spread the corner of your garment over me, since you are guardian-redeemer of our family.”
The word for “garment” in Hebrew is the same as “wing.” When Ruth first met Boaz, he referred to God’s wings providing her a place of refuge. Ruth was asking Boaz to become God’s wing for her permanently. And after going through a few Jewish legal channels, he accepted. He exercised his obligation and they became married. He bought not only Ruth’s deceased husband’s land but his brother’s land and Elimelech’s as well.
Now, what do you think it was that compelled Boaz to reach out to this outsider? Don’t say it was her good looks because I think it was more than that. I think it was because Boaz knew what it was like to be an outsider. Remember? His mom was Rahab, the harlot we talked about a couple weeks back. So Boaz knew what it was like to be an alien among the Hebrews. His mom would have told him.
Okay, what can we learn from Naomi’s and Ruth’s experience? What lessons can we GLEAN that will help us deal with the disappointments you and I “unwrap” in life? I want to quickly mention several things.
(1) First, we can “glean” the fact that the hurt of our disappointments will EASE.
I mean, if you have an ache in your heart today that feels like it will never go away, listen. It may never TOTALLY disappear, but it WILL ease. Your life may feel like a long, dark tunnel at the moment, but it’s not endless. There is light at the end. It may seem like it is far away but it is there! A time will come when you will be able to will feel joy once more. Just be patient, the sun will shine again in your life! Remember, it takes far more time for emotional wounds to heal than it does physical ones, but they DO heal!
Both Ruth and Naomi would tell you that an end came to their “tunnel of darkness.” Things got better! There was laughter once again in the lives of both of these women. So if you are hurting and alone like they were, then cling to the hope that your pain will ease. There’s did and yours will as well!
(2) A second lesson we can glean from this story is the importance of GETTING INVOLVED with life
Remember? Ruth didn’t drop out of life when her husband died. She moved to a strange land with Naomi and started life all over. And you know, it’s not so important WHAT she did as is the fact that she did SOMETING. Ruth stayed busy. She refused to quit on life. She got out in those fields.
Keeping busy like this; starting over, learning new things, it all goes a long way toward helping healing to begin. Remember, doing productive makes us FEEL productive. Many times when grief or pain comes we do nothing because we don’t FEEL like doing anything. In these times we can help turn things around as long as we remember it is possible to ACT our way into a new way of FEELING, by GETTING INVOLVED with life!
(3) Here’s a third important lesson: Maintain your INTEGRITY.
Ruth certainly did this. In fact, Boaz told Ruth that the thing that attracted him to her was her integrity. Listen to the words of Boaz in verse 11 of chapter 2:
I’ve been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband—how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before. May the Lord repay you for what you have done.
Many times when people “unwrap” disappointments, especially those that go with loneliness, they try to ease their pain with sinful actions. They take what they think is a shortcut to joy by seeking out the pleasures of sin. If you are hurting, I urge you to do as Ruth did and guard against this kind of temptation. Do all you can to live a Godly life. Remember there are two kinds of bad in this world. There are the inevitable consequences of living in a sinful world, an unfair world. But there are also consequences of disobeying God, repercussions of ignoring His guidelines.
And as a rule, life is fair-er for those who try to live God’s way. This is what 1st Peter 3:13 is referring to when it says, “Who is there to harm you if you prove zealous for what is good?” If you live a life of purity and integrity, in the long run you usually won’t suffer as much as those who habitually traffic in evil. For example, if you pay your debts, chances are good that you won’t get into financial trouble. If you pay your taxes on time, you probably won’t have the IRS down on your back. If you help others, you will probably have someone to help you when you are in need. To paraphrase Peters’ verse, “those who do what is right are usually not in harm’s way…USUALLY.”
Now please hear me in this, we live in a fallen world where the just still suffer unjustly, “rain DOES fall on the good and the bad…” but unjust suffering is always better than deserved judgment. So in your grief don’t abandon your moral principles, no matter how tempting it may be to do so.
(4) Here’s a fourth lesson we can glean: Don’t give in to SELF-PITY.
Ruth and Naomi had two options of how to respond to their unfair situation. One was to wallow in self-pity and bitterness and the other was to face life with optimism and hope. Naomi, chose the former. Listen to her words again, “I am too old to have another husband….and even if I did and had sons they’d be too young for you to marry….you’re better off leaving me…the hand of the Lord is against me…” When they arrived in Bethlehem she said to her friends who had come out to meet her, “Don’t call me Naomi…call me Mara, because the Lord Almighty has made my life bitter.”
Ray Stedman used to tell the story of an old woman and a preacher. This old woman would come forward at the end of every service and list all her problems in life and the preacher would try to give her some positive reason to look at life differently. Her response was: “You know, young man, when God sends tribulations, He EXPECTS you to tribulate.” Well, Naomi went beyond that. She wasn’t just tribulating amidst her tribulations. She had decided that God didn’t love her. He loved some people but not her. She believed God had left her and that she was going home to Bethlehem alone and empty-handed. I wonder if some of this sounds familiar. You just reached this point where it feels like what you had hoped for, what you felt God would deliver just didn’t work out, and you identify with this story because it feels like YOUR story. You know what it means to feel like “tribulating.” Grief is understandable; but taking the road to self-pity is a dead end street, and blaming God is both faithless and foolish, so we mustn’t be like Naomi in this.
Now Ruth, the younger, the new believer in God, well, she didn’t follow in her mother-in-law’s pitiful footsteps. No, instead of the road to self-pity, she choose the road of optimism and hope.
She pointed out what they had, not what they didn’t have. Ruth knew they still had each other and their relationship with God and that certainly was something. So she decided to go for life, to glean its simple pleasures, to harvest joy even in a strange land. And, this positive attitude was another thing that attracted Boaz to Ruth. He was drawn to her go-get-it work ethic. This is why he instructed his workers to be sure and leave a little extra grain for Ruth to glean.
And, when we choose not to be blinded by self-pity we can see that God does the same for us. In the midst of our struggle to survive, emotionally, financially, through sickness or bad relationships, whatever it is, if we look, we can see that God does provide for us, just as Boaz did for Ruth.
God misses nothing. He’s looking out for us. He’s listening to our prayers. 1 Peter 3:12 says, “The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and His ears attend to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.” Ruth’s and Naomi’s contrasting responses remind me of an old poem my dad used to quote: “Two men looked through prison bars…one saw mud…the other saw stars.” And when you face unfairness in life be like Ruth, look for stars, don’t slip into self-pity!
(5) This leads to the most important lesson we can “glean” from all this. In tough times we must ALWAYS trust God to REDEEM our situation.
Idleman points out that Naomi thought she was coming back empty, that God had abandoned her. But, as she learned later, God was at work in the middle of what seemed to be incredible loss. God was at work REDEEMING her story but at first Naomi couldn’t see this. Her bitterness blinded her to the treasure she had in her daughter-in-law. Later, when her grandson was born, her friends told her, that Ruth was better than SEVEN sons! God was redeeming the story of Naomi’s life way back when He brought Ruth into their family. God continued to do His redemptive work by directing Ruth to glean from Boaz’s field, a man who, as I said, knew what it was like to be on the outside looking in, and who was kind to her. Then, God blessed Ruth and Boaz with a son named Obed, who had a son named Jesse, who had a son named David, and twenty-eight generations later, a little baby named Jesus was born in a stable in that little town of Bethlehem. Boaz was Ruth and Naomi’s kinsman-redeemer and from their lineage came OUR KINSMAN REDEEMER, Jesus, the Christ! When she held that grandbaby in her lap for the first time, I think Naomi opened her eyes and was able to see that God was taking all her “wood chips” – all the broken pieces of her life, and turning them into something beautiful.
God does that kind of thing all the time. He works in ALL things for our good. He withholds no good thing from us. He is able to REDEEM any tragedy, any difficulty. Through our faith in Jesus He is even able to REDEEM us from our sinful state! So, when you “unwrap” something in life and it’s not what you wanted, it’s disappointing, it’s painful, trust our sovereign God. He can redeem ANYTHING. It may take a while from our perspective but God’s timing is always perfect. I mean, the “box” you’ve opened in life may be labeled, “widow” or “divorced” or “cancer” or “laid off” or “infertile” or “abused” or just plain, “getting old…” but don’t think that is the end of your story. There may be more in that box! Your story doesn’t have to be about disappointment or loss. It can be about redemption. Give God a chance to work.
Let us pray.