Naomi is one of those women in Scripture whose life seems great in the end. Not so much in her prime when everything was supposed to turn out right. She started out full with a husband and two sons and ended up a childless widow. I’d say that makes her one of the saddest women in Scripture.
Even Naomi told people to call her Mara because Naomi meant “pleasant” but Mara meant “bitter” and she was quite bitter after suffering so much loss.
I don’t want to know how she felt, because I am certain her suffering was far worse than mine. But then no one wants to live what Naomi lived.
In the book of Ruth, we want to focus on her daughter-in-law Ruth and Ruth’s love for Naomi, but Naomi was her own person and she can teach us something no one else in Scripture shows us quite so well.
Naomi shows us that sometimes we have to go back before we can move forward. Have you ever thought of that? I didn’t realize it at first, but the more I’ve studied the book, the more I see the need Naomi had for a do-over. She needed the chance to return to the God of her people and the good she had known when she remained in the Promised Land.
When her husband led them away from that land, nothing was ever the same and Naomi lost everything she held dear.
I wonder how often we wander into territory where we know we should not go but do it anyway? How much time do we stay away before we realize that what we are missing is something we left behind when we wandered? Naomi followed her family, and in her day no one would have faulted her for that. Even today a family stays together.
But wandering left her widowed, childless, and desolate, with only one option. Die alone in a foreign land, or turn around and go home.
Do you think that was hard for her to do? She’d left all she knew and now wondered if anyone would remember her. But going back was to return to the land God had said He wanted His people to inhabit. Going back was to return to her roots, face the failures of her past, and hope she might still be able to find rest and even joy for the remainder of her life.
By going back to set right what she knew her family had gotten wrong, she regained the chance at a future and a hope. She returned to find family who ended up making the end of her life one of joy instead of sadness. And her grandson is listed in the genealogy of Jesus Christ.
But she had to make that tough choice to go home. And the same is true for us today.
If we’ve wandered from what we know deep in our hearts is true, do we have the courage to turn around and go back home to the place, to the people, to the God we long for? Because going back is often times the only way we can go forward.
~Selah
#naomi #shewalkedbeforeus #ruth #behindthescenes #goingbackmeansgoingforward #ourGodmakesallthingsnew
