God Uses Broken Things

Daily Byte

The story of Naomi and Ruth is one of the most familiar in the Old Testament. It is a story that usually focuses more on Ruth, and thus the book is titled after her. But I often think of it as a story more about Naomi. The beginning of the book starts with Naomi and the end of the book concludes with Naomi. In between, we see the merging of two unlikely candidates for familial ties. The Hebrew Naomi and her husband and their two sons are living in Moab because of a famine in their own land. Naomi is Hebrew and Ruth is a Moabite. Nationalism and ethnic purity were strong barriers in that era. They are strong tendencies toward barriers in our current era.

As we view Naomi initially, she had to be happy, and if not happy she had to be hopeful for the future. She has a husband and she has two sons. Some say, that means she had three sons. Her husband represented fulfillment in the current day, but probably what gave her great joy was her sons and the prospect of having grandchildren. Naomi was living it up off of what she had and what she expected to have.

But we learn that Naomi’s husband suddenly died. Ouch! That had to have hurt her deeply. The story then says her sons married Moabite women, but they both suddenly died. Ouch and ouch again! This trilogy of deaths stopped me cold in my tracks to ask why are these men dying? The most probable reason was war. War then and war now takes lives. War has always been a widow-maker and if my speculation is right, it reached into Naomi’s life with a vengeance.

We find one of the Moabite women, Ruth, attaching to Naomi and together they move to Naomi’s hometown of Bethlehem. After some maneuvering, Ruth marries Naomi’s relative, Boaz. Ruth and Boaz have a son. That is where we pickup on the text today. Naomi is holding Ruth’s baby in her lap. What a joyous picture. This woman that had lost so much is now enjoying the role as caregiver to Ruth and Boaz’s child. If you cannot see some joy in that we need to check your pulse.

On top of that, the record is that the women that lived there got involved. They started saying, “Naomi has a son.” It was like they had a baby shower for Naomi. Something special happens when a baby is introduced into a room full of women. There was a shared joy that seemed to permeate the community. This was not a personal joy. To me, there is something suspicious about personal joy that is just for you or just for yours. Real joy is shared.

The moral of the story of Naomi and Ruth is that the journey to joy takes us through devastated aspirations and broken lives. Crumbled aspirations and broken lives are fertile ground for God’s work to be revealed. Often it is our intact aspirations and intact lives that hold God away. A shattering or a breakage is an opportunity for God to get through to us.

Focus Reading
Ruth 4:13-14

So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. When they came together, the Lord made her conceive, and she bore a son. Then the women said to Naomi, “Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day without next-of-kin; and may his name be renowned in Israel!

Staying Online – Prayer

Lord we come to you and ask you to “take us, and break us, and make us just like you. Take us, and break us, and make us just like you”.