Ordinary People (Part 1)

In the book of Ruth there is a famine which causes Naomi, along with her husband and two sons, to leave their home and go to a foreign land. This land was...strange. A strange land, filled with strange people, who worshiped strange gods, and had a rather sketchy history with Israel. Over the course of time, Naomi's husband and both sons die and she is left alone here.

A devastating, terrifying situation for a woman at this point in history.

Naomi's only hope is to return to her own land and family. According to custom, her widowed daughters-in-law should return to their families in (desperate) hope of finding new husbands. One daughter-in-law chooses to stay with Naomi and journey to Bethlehem. Here, much of the focus in this story shifts to Ruth, but I'd like to stay with Naomi for a bit...

This is what Naomi has to say about the fate that has befallen her:

Even if I thought there was hope for me...(Ruth 1:12) It has been far more bitter for me than it has for you, because YAHWEH has turned against me. (1:13) Call me no longer Naomi (pleasant), call me Mara (bitter), for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me. I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty; why call me Naomi when Yahweh has dealt harshly with me, and the Almighty has brought calamity on me? (1:20-21)

God and Pain.

There's an odd thing about today's Christian and pain - we're really uncomfortable "blaming" God. We want to divorce God from pain. We spend a lot of time analyzing where God is when it hurts, or why bad things happen to good people. But in the end, ultimate blame is attributed to sin, or Satan or a fallen world...

Naomi knew nothing of this.

In Naomi's time - and long, long before Naomi's time - all ancient people believed that "gods" were responsible for everything. There was no such thing as an atheist, or an agnostic, or a distant god. The question was never IF there was a god, or WOULD a god intervene - there was only one question; WHICH god.

Maybe this concept is difficult for us because we have much more knowledge of the workings of the universe. Or maybe it's because we are so self-sufficient and self-reliant. Maybe we dismiss the world view of the ancients as incomplete because this kind of thinking brings God very...very...

near.

Naomi lived out of a belief system that said:
Yahweh, the One True God, All Powerful, All Present, Creator of heaven, earth and all of the universe, has WILLED and DESIGNED my life to be a journey of hunger, pain, loss, fear, insecurity and instability.

What if she is right?