Uncertainty, Loss, & Sovereignty – Gleanings from Ruth 1

Our Setting

We are living in a very different world than we were just five short months ago. There has been a pandemic driving fear and public health concerns, racial unrest throughout the entire country as we have witnessed brothers and sisters of color being mistreated and oppressed by local law enforcement, natural disasters attacking the coast and leaving wreckage in their wake, a turbulent political landscape super-charged by divisive personalities and rhetoric from all sides, and all the resulting changes in our personal lives. These changes include lost hopes and dreams, loss of friendships, divisive attitudes, and a hard-to-navigate school year in which many of our previous plans and arrangements have changed. Small wonder that our faith isn’t shaken. Sometimes, we might wonder about, or question God’s sovereignty over all things, his wisdom in all of the mess, and even his love. I believe that we can see some principles in the book of Ruth which help us to understand God’s sovereignty, his wisdom, and his love, and how we respond to each of those attributes.

The Setting

The book of Ruth is set against a backdrop of national famine, death, loss of hope,  social stratification and ethnic division, and yet, God shows his steadfast love to his people. He visits them in their need.

The Plot

After seeking refuge from starvation within the foreign nation of Moab – a national enemy of Israel – a man from Bethlehem in Judah brings his wife, Naomi, and his two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, to sojourn there. But the story doesn’t stay clean for long. Elimelech and his two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, die in Moab, leaving Naomi and Mahlon and Chilion’s Moabite wives alone and unattached in a religiously hostile foreign nation during the time of the Judges. How will these women, widowed, barren, and bitter, survive? Our plot thickens when Naomi hears in the fields of Moab that “the LORD had visited his people and given them food” (1.6).

The Return

At this point, Naomi and her daughters-in-law decide to head back to Bethlehem, a return for Naomi which she hoped might ease her desolation. After one of these daughters-in-law quite sensibly turns back to Moab for her mother’s home and possibly new life after tragedy, the other one, Ruth, refuses to be easily turned back. In fact, her response to Naomi’s repeated entreaties to “Go…return to your mother’s house…Turn back…Turn back,”  Ruth responds with language similar to the call of Abram in Genesis 12, echoing God’s promise to the patriarch in her promise to Naomi:

But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you, or return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I shall die, and there will I be buried. May the LORD do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.” (1:16-17)

Amazingly, even after ten years of childless marriage in a pagan land, and the deaths of her husband, father-in-law, and brother-in-law, Ruth voices her solidarity with the God of Israel, even using his personal covenant name, translated as ‘the LORD’ in the English translations. By pursuing this movement in her speech, Ruth is showing that she is identifying with Israel’s covenant God, the LORD. She’s going all in on the LORD’s faithfulness to his people, being willing even after Naomi’s death to bind herself to the LORD in a land not her own. God’s turning of Ruth to his covenant family defies all logic, when the sensible thing to do would be to return from a looming life of suffering, disappointment, and struggle.

The Connection

What are some ways this connects to our lives today? First, the Christian life is a return. After our first parents ate the forbidden fruit and fell into sin and misery in the garden, mankind has been searching for God, trying to return to him. We can see this in the fact that there are no godless nations in the world today; no matter what country you look at, there is some type of divinity being worshiped, some type of god on the throne in their hearts. All humanity knows deep down that there is someone to whom they owe worship. Thus, when one turns to the Lord of Creation, like Ruth did, they are ultimately returning to the One who formed them and has called them into relationship with him. He has brought them back to him.

Second, the Christian life is not easy. Naomi, who worshiped the LORD God of Israel her whole life, did not have an easy go of things. Neither did Ruth. No one would sign up for such a life as we read about in this chapter. Why would we? We desire comfort, ease, and favor in all our surroundings. But God’s providence does not neglect suffering; in fact, for the Christian, it often includes it. And if we find ourselves in the struggle, suffering with the pains of loss, sorrow, or disappointment, it is natural to feel bitterness over our circumstances. Naomi’s testimony of bitterness and emptiness find a home in all our hearts when we’ve endured seasons of loss, sorrow, and disappointment; seasons much like the recent environment we’ve been living in.

Third, the bleak picture we read of in chapter one of Ruth leads us to believe that the Lord is doing something. He has a plan. The statement in verse six that “the LORD had visited his people and given them food,” sets up what follows in chapter two. What did a visit from the Lord look like for Israel? What does a visit from the Lord look like for us? The rest of the book will guide us in answering that question, and many more.