Turning to the Promised Land | Ruth 1 | Liz Trenckmann

Good morning.

It is really nice to be here with you.

Today we're going to be in Ruth chapter 1.

Ruth 1 · chapter mention

So if you'll open your Bibles to Ruth chapter 1, it's this tiny little book after Judges.

Ruth 1 · chapter mention

Verse 1 says, In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land.

So a man from Bethlehem and Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab.

The man's name was Elimelech.

His wife was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Malon and Killian.

They were Ephraithites from Bethlehem, Judah, and they went to Moab and lived there.

Now Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died, and she was left with her two sons.

They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth, and after they had lived there about ten years, both Malon and Kilean also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.

When Naomi heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, she and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there.

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.

Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, Go back, each of you to your mother's home.

May the Lord show you kindness as you have shown kindness to your dead husbands and to me.

May the Lord grant that each of you find rest in the home of another husband.

Then she kissed them goodbye, and they wept aloud and said to her, We will go back with you to your people.

But Naomi said, Return home, my daughters, why would you come with me?

Am I going to have any more sons who would come become your husbands?

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, 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 turned against me.

At this they wept aloud again, and then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her.

Look, said Naomi, your sister-in-law is going back to her people and to her gods.

Go back with her.

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.

Where you die, I will die, and then I will be buried.

May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.

When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.

So the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem.

When they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them, and the women explained, Can this be Naomi?

Don't call me Naomi.

She told them, Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter.

I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty.

Why call me Naomi?

The Lord has afflicted me, the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.

So Naomi returned from Moab, accompanied by Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, living in Bethlehem as the barley harvest was beginning.

In the summer, I remember a summer.

It was the summer between finishing high school and starting college.

One day I was driving down the road, and the Idaho blue sky felt limitless.

And I remember the sunrays reaching from treetop to treetop, and Dixie Jicks was blaring through the speakers.

Who's never left home?

Who's never struck out to find a dream and a life of their own?

A young girl's dreams no longer hold hollow, but what it holds for her, she hasn't yet guessed.

Finally, I was about to touch with my fingertips the dreams most kids spend their years pining for.

I was leaving childhood behind and I was racing towards adulthood.

What the future held, I hadn't yet guessed, but I was ready to run full force into it.

Some of my dreams those days were becoming a teacher, traveling, but living close to home, marrying Jonathan Taylor Thomas.

Hadn't met Rob yet, but he definitely was the picture on the wall.

Looking back at some of my dreams, some of them have happened as I hoped.

You know, I've gotten to teach in schools and I've gotten to travel.

However, there are some of my dreams that haven't happened exactly how I thought they would, and some of them haven't happened at all.

So I'm curious, do you remember any of your childhood dreams?

What were they?

Which ones are you living out today, and which ones are still dreams?

Are there any that you think about and wonder if I had just made a different choice or turned a different direction, that you might be living them today?

This morning we're in Ruth's chapter one, and Ruth was living the dream.

She was living life in the Promised Land.

Um, just a little backstory to help us understand Ruth.

Um, the big picture in the Old Testament is we've got creation, then we've got the fall, and then we've got the flood.

Then comes our first major Old Testament heroes.

We've got Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph.

Umfortunately, what follows is 400 years of desert life.

Um, Israel are led out of the desert by Moses, and then following Moses, we've got Joshua and Judges, and later stories we read about some other big guns like Saul and David and Solomon.

And Ruth is this tiny powerhouse, it's four chapters long, um, taking uh place during the reign of Judges.

And the common phrase in the book of Judges, when Ruth took place, adequately describes life at that time.

And it says, everyone did what was right in their own eyes.

The book of Ruth begins with a family that unfortunately lives this out.

Begins, this story begins in tragedy and loss, but because of God's mercy, ends in grace and redemption.

Keep your book, Bibles open, we're gonna keep going through these verses.

So read with me again, verses one through two.

It says, In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land.

So a man from Bethlehem and Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab.

The man's name was Elimelech, his wife's name was Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Malon and Kileon.

They were Ephraithes from Bethlehem and Judah.

Naomi was considered this blessed Jewish woman.

She lived in the promised land, she was married, which brought financial security and legal rights.

She was a mom to boys, which gave her heirs to carry on the name and the family heritage.

Her life, her family, her finances, and her faith are dreams many people hope for.

But then a famine struck the land.

Hard times hit, faith turned to fear, and Naomi and her family fled the promised land.

And at the end of verse 2 it says, And they went to Moab and lived there.

Now Moab is not where they should have gone.

We see this in Genesis 12, 1 through 3.

It says, The Lord has said to Abraham, Go from your country, your people, and your father's household to the land I will show you.

I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you.

I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse.

And this is the Moabites.

The Moabites were the people who cursed God's people.

Balak, a king of Moab, hired the prophet Balaam to curse the Israelites.

We got talking donkey, everything.

If you hadn't read the story, it's a great one.

But instead of the Israelites being cursed, the Moabites became the ones under God's curse.

So therefore, Naomi and her family did not go to a place where the people of Abraham were blessed, but to a place where the people of Abraham were cursed.

Naomi and her family left Judah with the hope of finding life.

But the place delivered only death.

Desperation can lead us to rushed and rash decisions.

In the next verses, we see this lived out.

Notice what happens in verse three.

It says, Now Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died, and she was left with two sons.

Elimelech died.

Naomi lost her best friend, her lover, her encourager, her comforter, the person who held her in her pain and cheered for her in her victories.

And then when things couldn't get worse, we get to verses four and five.

And it says, after they had lived there about 10 years, both Malon and Kileon also died.

And Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.

Naomi's sons died.

Not just one, but two.

Both of them gone.

The kids that she sung to sleep, the boys she watched invent games in the backyards, the ones that tracked mud from the very back door to the very front door and into the kitchen were gone.

And now, after chasing fulfillment, Naomi now finds herself empty.

Those of you who have walked the road of loss of a spouse or a child understand the grief Naomi was immersed in.

The gut-wrenching, soul-splitting, agonizing pain, pain that leaves one on their knees in sobbing tears, in immobilizing, agonizing, and excruciating pain.

We see Naomi's full sorrow at the end of chapter one as she is saying goodbye to her daughters-in-law, she says, It is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord has turned against me.

Can you feel the sadness and the sorrow in her voice?

Can you feel the pain and distress in her soul?

Naomi had left the promised land for a land without promise.

And now she stands looking at an unknown future and an unknown God.

A future once filled with fulfilled dreams, now filled with empty ones.

How do you relate to Naomi?

Like Naomi, perhaps adulthood hasn't quite gone the way that you imagined it.

Those childhood dreams haven't all come true.

Maybe relationships are strained, or parenting is hard.

You haven't met the person of your dreams yet.

Perhaps the career promotions haven't come as quickly as you imagined.

Maybe health is a constant battle, or discouragement, or depression loom.

Maybe your adult children aren't making the decisions you wished they would.

Maybe you're thinking about college.

Maybe you're starting a new school or struggling to find friends that want to really know you.

Maybe you find yourself losing faith in faith.

So if you do, you should resonate with this story.

But it's not just Naomi that's at a crossroads.

It's Ruth and Orpa too.

They have all lost their past and their present and their future.

Now Ruth and Naomi and Orpah were homeless and hopeless and hurting.

And now they're paused on a dirty, dusty road, standing on the precipice of an unknown, deciding their destiny.

Each one making a decision that would change each of their lives forever.

Will they turn?

Will they return or will they turn away?

Will they turn to God, return to God, or completely turn away from God?

As we read their stories, ask yourself, how do I respond when life isn't going as planned?

What are my options when life doesn't go the way I wish it would?

What choices do I make?

Do I turn to God?

Do I need to return to God?

Or do I just turn away from God?

Read with me verse six and on.

Then Naomi heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them.

She and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there.

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.

Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, Go back, each of you, to your mother's home.

May the Lord show kindness as you have shown kindness to your dead husbands and to me.

May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.

Then she kissed them goodbye, and they wept aloud and said to her, We will go back with you to your people.

But Naomi said, Return home, my daughters.

Why would you come with me?

Am I going to have any more sons who would become your husbands?

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, would you wait until they grow up?

Would you remain unmarried for them?

No, my daughters, it is more better for me than for you, because the Lord's hand has turned against me.

At this they wept aloud, and then Orpa kissed her mother-in-law goodbye.

But Ruth clung to her.

Look, said Naomi, your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods go back with her.

What a heavy picture.

Naomi is standing there with tears of sorrow and grief covering her face, probably saturating her clothes.

I am sure this is not the childhood dream Naomi had.

For 10 years, these women were her daughters.

They were the last thing she had of her sons, likely the last immediate living family.

And here she is pulling their arms off of her and saying goodbye.

Perhaps you've gone through or going through pain like this.

Health problems, it's it's a cancer diagnosis, or financial pressures, or too much month for the money, or broken relationships.

You thought someone was different than who they actually are.

Fractured families, adult children are making decisions you didn't want them to be.

Loss of loved ones, failed dreams, or not feeling like you quite fit in.

Pain deep enough that you want to be sick.

In this type of pain, God can feel distant and life can feel beyond what we can bear.

The Bible can feel like a book of fairy tales instead of a book of faith.

And the love of the Father can feel ungraspable.

If I'm honest, this kind of pain can leave me wishing I had made a different decision or turned a different direction.

When I was four, my parents divorced, and I remember moving across the country with my mom and my brother.

We moved from North Carolina to Boise, Idaho.

And when we arrived in Boise, Idaho, we snuggled into my grandparents' house.

My brother and I shared a room, he was on the top bunk, and I was on the bottom bunk.

And this became a new life.

All of us were in this same house, and we started some new traditions.

Um, one of those was Sunday dinner with my grandparents.

Um, my grandma would make dinner and I would make dessert next to her.

My grandma became one of my best friends, and she was the backbone of our family.

My grandpa was amazing.

He could grow raspberries and tomatoes with his eyes closed, but the poor man could not do a load of laundry or make a piece of toast.

Um my grandma was the one that kept us steady as life was out of balance.

But then when I was in sixth grade, my grandma and I both found tumors.

I found one on my leg, and my grandma found one on her neck.

Mine was benign, but hers was malignant.

And then a few months later, I woke up to my six foot two, very proud military grandpa, sobbing in my living room, his head and his hands, and he was just weeping and shaking.

And I remember thinking, my grandpa needs my grandma.

My mom needs my grandpa, my brother needs my grandma, and I need my grandma.

And she was gone.

The cancer had taken her.

And that moment I thought, if God was real, then he was awful.

And turning away from him was the only option that I could see.

It's so common for people to turn away from God.

It's hard to believe that God is kind and that God is loving when we feel so lonely and scared.

We see in Orpah, we don't know much about her.

We do know that she was a Moabite and she was married to one of Naomi's sons.

We don't really know why her husband died.

We do know that he was Naomi named her son Malon and Kilion.

And the scholars are connecting those names with like sickness and frailty and wasting.

Maybe not the best names to name your children, but um, I think they're a representation of what they were like when they were babies.

So their bodies may have been weak.

There could have been a lot of things that happened.

But they also, we also know they didn't have children.

And so his death left Orpah with a need to start over.

She's left with the choice to turn towards her married family, going towards what she doesn't know, or to turn back to her biological family, going back to what she does know.

So Orpah kisses her mother-in-law goodbye.

But her decision was more than a daughter-in-law saying goodbye to a mother-in-law.

It was someone choosing death instead of life.

Turning towards God or turning away from him.

Orpa took her grief and her sorrow and turned away from the God, the true God.

She turned away from the one who knows sorrow, the one who grieved in the Garden of Eden and again in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Orpah turned away from the one who could grieve with her.

And we see a similar response from Naomi.

Like, Orpah Naomi misses out on something really important.

Read with me, verse 20.

This is Naomi's response to her friends as she enters Bethlehem overcome by grief.

She says, Don't call me Naomi.

She told them, Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter.

I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty.

Why call me Naomi?

The Lord has afflicted me.

The Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.

She is a woman of wounds and blames God.

Naomi has renamed herself, refusing to go by her God-given name, meaning delighted in, but by a by another name meaning bitter.

Naomi's broken and has given up on hope.

And I've I just have such empathy for her.

There have been times when I've laid on my bed in tears, with tears streaming down my face, asking, why, God, why?

There was a season like this in Hungary.

Um, some of you might know that we lived in Hungary for almost 10 years.

And during our time there, I was struggling with really severe and debilitating back pain that would leave me in bed for days.

Uh, I did see a doctor that was recommended.

Ended and a mistake happened, and it ended with uh awful nerve damage and damage to my spine.

And so the following five years, I think was filled with like 300 doctors' appointments.

Um, Rob found me a really great doctor in Vienna, but Vienna was three hours away from our home.

And and in the UK, Brits are like three hours, that's a long ways here, where you know, we drive all the time.

So three hours isn't that far.

But when you're excruciating in excruciating pain, it's really far.

And so when we get into the car, Rob would like pad me with pillows everywhere.

And honestly, if I wasn't in pain, it would have been a very luxurious car ride.

Um, but I hurt a lot.

And we would pack pack into the car with with Caleb, and we would drive to Vienna on Tuesday, and then I would see a doctor.

We would spend the night there Tuesday night, and I would see the doctor again on Wednesday.

We would spend Wednesday night there, and I would see the doctor on Thursday, and then we would drive home.

We would have youth group Friday night at our house, and then church on Sunday, and then the following week would be the same, and the following week, and this went on for months.

Perhaps you've been through a season like this.

Seasons that don't go how you dreamed they would.

Rob and I were missionaries.

We had left our families, we were living in a foreign land, and we were following God's call to go.

And yet, all I really wanted to do was go home.

Most of us have had pain that takes us to the point of asking, why?

God, why?

And then it makes me wonder why is it so tempting to ask that question?

Why do we so easily go to why?

And I think it's because pain hurts.

And pain can cause us to forget the most important things.

First, that God sees us.

He sees our pain and he sees our struggle.

And second, that he provides space and time for healing for our pain or our suffering or our discouragement.

We see it in scriptures.

We read about David weeping and lamenting at length in the Psalms.

We see our Savior weep at the tomb of his best friend Lazarus.

God wants us to weep and mourn.

Why?

Because there's holiness to weeping.

When we weep, we join God in mourning things that are not the way they're supposed to be.

When we weep and mourn, we embrace this world as imperfect.

Being sad over what we've lost or are losing, it's okay.

It's even best.

However, when we're face to face with things like sorrow and loss and miscarriages and bodies not working right and marriages not thriving and unfulfilling friendships, that pain can beckon us into bitterness.

And when we choose bitterness, we choose a bed nourished by hostility and cynicism and resentment.

And when we don't weep and mourn over our wounds, we end up bitter.

We become like Naomi.

So what do we do?

Well, instead of bitterness, we choose godly grief.

Godly grief is when we weep and mourn over the things that God also grieves.

We weep and mourn for the perfect unity of love between people and for the perfect love between the creator and the created.

We grieve as God grieves.

In this first chapter, sadly, Orpah and Naomi miss an opportunity to grieve with God.

Orpah completely turns away from God, and Naomi returns with her flesh, but not with her heart.

In protecting their hearts, they missed the very heart of God.

I'm sure God wanted to weep with them.

Because God's heart is to comfort and weeping.

His heart is for both of them to reject distance and bitterness and choose closeness with him.

His heart is for Orpa to turn to him and for Naomi to return to him with body and heart.

His heart for them is to sit in their grief with them.

How about you?

How do you grieve?

When do you grieve?

Do you grieve dreams not yet lived or dreams that are never going to be lived?

Do you grieve with the Father?

Do you grieve with God?

Do you join Him in grieving for a broken world, or do you accuse and attack and grow bitter?

Is your body present but your heart distant?

How do you grieve?

Is godly grief what you run to when you're struggling?

We all have grief because we live in a broken world, but we often forget to take that grief to the Father, to sit with him in prayer, to lament, to share our pain with him.

Hebrew tells us that we have a high priest who sympathizes with our weaknesses.

It tells us that we can approach the throne of grace with confidence and find help in our time of need.

Your discouragement, your disappointment, those moments when our hopes and realities don't meet.

Take them to the Lord.

Get somewhere quiet, even for a moment, and tell them, tell him about them and listen, read his word, and remember that Jesus suffered in all the ways that we do.

Grieve with God.

However, there's a third woman in our story, a woman who makes two different choices than the other two.

Verse 15 and 16 say, Look, said Naomi, your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods.

Go back with her.

But Ruth replied, Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you.

Ruth's first unique choice was to turn.

Now Ruth was not the woman we expected her to be.

She was a Moabite by birth, an idol worshipper by trade, and a pagan by existence.

She was an enemy to Israel, not one to be chosen, not one to be redeemed, and not one to be restored.

According to the world, she should have turned back.

She should have gone with Orpah back to Moab, to the land of Chemosh, to the land God calls his wash basin.

To save her life, she should not have even considered entering the Promised Land.

So on that dirty, dusty road, watching Naomi turn one way and her sister turn the other, lay before her a choice.

To the God of death or to the God of life.

But Naomi wasn't alone in this decision.

And neither are we.

A few years after my grandma died, a friend invited me to a Christian camp.

I really didn't want to go.

But when you're a teenager, the phrase cute boys and no parents goes like a long way.

The camp was in the Rocky Mountains in Idaho.

The girls had log cabins on one side and the boys had log cabins on the other.

And then in the middle was this like kind of game building where we'd all get together and eat meals and plays play games.

And then off into the woods, into the pine trees, there was an A-frame that we used as a chapel.

And one afternoon, as we were walking to the chapel, I saw the pastor come out the back door, and I saw his eyes light up as he kneeled and he scooped up two little girls.

And my eyes were fixed on him and his love and his delight for them.

And something in me broke.

And I realized I wanted to be loved like that.

I wanted to be delighted in.

I wanted a father to look at me with the same pleasure and joy and want as he looked at them.

And at the end of the week, he shared the gospel and he told us about this loving father who delights in and wants each of us.

And the God that was working in my heart that week is the same God that was working in Ruth's heart.

And because of it, Ruth did something incredible.

She chose the God who was choosing her.

She turned to the God who had turned to her.

And we read her words that seem without even hesitation to spew out of her mouth.

In verses 16 and 17, it says, 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 and me.

Without hesitation, without fear, without angst, we see Ruth embrace her own appeal and begin the walk to the God who is choosing her.

Picture this.

Behind her, the land without promise, but before her lay the promised land.

Behind her, a god of wood, but now before her, a god of flesh.

Behind her, a dying kingdom, but now before her, an eternal one.

Some of us are like Ruth, and we're standing at a crossroads.

We can choose to go back to the land of dead, or we can press on to the land of life.

We can choose the land without promise or the promised land.

But maybe like Ruth, from where you stand, the promised land may be really unfamiliar or scary, and you're forced to trust in what you can't see.

You're forced to trust in what you can see, but in a God that you can't see.

Like Orpa, Ruth, and Naomi have a choice in our pain.

It's tempting to turn away or return filled with bitterness.

However, turning away or returning with bitterness aren't our only choices.

For there is a God choosing you, and you can choose him too.

What's your choice when you're in pain?

Do you turn to God or do you turn to bitterness?

Do you come to God with clenched fists and a locked jaw and a stare that could kill?

Or do you dwell in the Father's love when facing an unknown future?

Do you trust Him when you can't see where you're going?

Just like for Ruth, there's the God who is choosing you.

So we have Ruth's first choice, which was to turn to God who was choosing her, and then her second choice, which is cling to the king who knows her pain.

Like Ruth, we are loved by the God who knows pain and failure and disappointment and sorrow.

In Isaiah 53, we find a Savior battling pain himself.

It says, He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering and familiar with pain, like one from whom people hide their faces.

He was despised and we held him in low esteem.

He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth.

By oppression and judgment he was taken away.

He took up our pain and bore our suffering, and by his wounds we are healed.

We are loved by the God who knows pain and loss and struggle and despair.

And just as Ruth did, we get to cling to a king who knows our pain.

And we don't have to go it alone.

Perhaps you know the story about Jim and Elizabeth Elliot.

Jim was a missionary in to a people group in Ecuador, and they were said to just be really violent and dangerous.

And Jim and a group began flying over this island and dropping baskets full of gifts.

And then one day they decided to visit in person.

But it was within minutes of them landing, a group of warriors killed Jim and his four other companions, leaving Elizabeth a widow and a mom to a little girl named Valerie.

But what makes the story so powerful is that 10 years later, Elizabeth returns to the people who killed her husband to share the love of Jesus with them.

And she writes In my own life, I think I can honestly say that out of the deepest pain has come the strongest conviction of the presence of God and the love of God.

When pain hurts too much to bear, just as Ruth turned to God, we turn to the cross to remember Christ's loneliness and misery and heartache.

It's at the cross we find a Godman who knows earthly pain and abandonment and grief.

It's at the cross we find a savior who lived through horror himself.

And because of his death, we as children of God find union and pain with the suffering servant.

As Christians, we don't mourn alone, but with one who understands.

We are loved by a king who knows our pain.

How are you doing at grieving?

Do you grieve?

Who do you grieve with when life hurts?

Do you grieve with the one who mourned on the cross?

Do you bury yourself in Christ's chest and weep with him?

Are you clinging to the king who knows your pain?

Now this story has been a lot about sorrow and grief and desperation and tragedy and loss and despair.

But there's really good news.

This isn't how the chapter ends.

The chapter ends with this glimmer of hope.

I hope that you saw it.

There's a light at the end of the tunnel.

Verse 22 are some of my favorite words in this story.

And they say, So Naomi returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, arriving in Bethlehem as the barley harvest was beginning.

The barley harvest was beginning.

The Lord was already coming to the aid of his people.

God was bringing these two back to life.

God was ready to meet their needs.

And a new life for both of them was already in motion months prior because the fields had been cultivated, the seeds had been sown, and the crops had been watered.

And they were ready for them to take hold of it.

Verse 22 is the turning of a page.

It's a starting of a new life.

It's a glimmer of hope.

The hope which carries us to the end of the story of Ruth, where there's a babe.

A babe is born, a babe that keeps this tiny book of Ruth from ending in chapter four, but continuing on to Matthew chapter one.

That same babe makes Naomi the great, great, great something grandma to the Son of God.

Jesus is her grandchild.

Incredible.

God not only draws Naomi out of bitterness, but also gives her a royal heritage.

Now I will say, God doesn't promise us a happy ending, but he does promise us the same ending as Naomi and Ruth.

And that is Jesus.

While in pain, Ruth turning and Naomi returning to their Redeemer, God uses their pain to bring about the one who brought about our salvation.

And then God uses Christ's pain to bring about the fruit of the kingdom.

As we see with Ruth and Naomi, God is working long in advance to bring about hope and light into their darkness.

But sometimes hope is hard to hold on to when the depths of pain and sorrow, when they can feel impossible to see any light, impossible to dream about hurt diminishing, when it's impossible to think about any good coming out of such heartache and struggle.

But thankfully, we as Christians today know that Christ didn't stay in the grave.

And so sorrow isn't the end.

Today we live in hope knowing that Jesus is alive.

Christ is our glimmer of hope.

Christ is our barley harvest, and he promises a new promised land, a place of no more pain and no more sorrow and no more sadness, just life and life in abundance.

There will be a day when there is a turning of a page, and our new life is fully in the light of God.

So when you're struggling to see any light in the darkness, we hold on to the hope of this certain future.

Dreams don't often happen as we expect them to.

But as we turn to God, as we grieve with God, as we cling to the King, God gives us a Savior that sits in our sorrow with us.

Sit with the Lord in prayer.

Share your sorrow with him.

Open the words, see how he responds to pain, and go to the midweek gatherings, share with others, feel his love through other people.

And remember, the Lord loves to come to the aid of his people.

Turn to him because we don't mourn alone, but with one who understands.

Let me pray for us.

Father God, we thank you for stories like this.

Stories that we can read and see who you are.

This is a mere hitting on the love that is throughout the book of Ruth that we see and how Boaz cares for Ruth and Naomi.

Lord, we're thankful that we get to come to you.

We're thankful that Christ died on the cross, that when we are struggling with anything small to big, that you are there with us, that you want to wrap your arms around us, that you want to saturate us in your presence.

We thank you for a king that knows our pain.

We thank you, Lord, that you walk with us through the good and the hard times of life.

Lord, help us to come to you.

Help us to share with you.

Help us to pray to you and to read your word and to share with others.

Lord, we love you and draw us to yourself.

Help us to know you deeper.

In your heavenly name.

Amen.