Devastation

Devastation[i]

Maybe your goldfish died. 

Or your boyfriend just broke up with you. 

You are being picked on at school and no one seems to care.   

You lost your job. 

Your parents are splitting up. 

Maybe a private indulgence is becoming a compulsion is becoming an addiction, and it’s getting away from you.  You thought you had it, and now it has you. 

Maybe your spouse is growing distant and your gut tells you they are spending time with someone else. 

Maybe you’ve lost a child. 

Maybe you’ve been triple-hit by loss and tragedy, and you select like a buffet from the above items, or add others of your own, to suit your sorry circumstance.    

Maybe it sucks to be you right now. 

Who's to blame for the lives that tragedies claim?  No matter what you say it don't take away the pain that I feel inside… There's got to be more to life than this. There's got to be more to everything I thought exists.

P.O.D. (see the above music vid)

Welcome to the world (not to be confused with life). 

A couple of generations before the glory days of Israel’s King David, a family of four emigrates to the land of opportunity: no, not America.  Moab.  That is, west-central Jordan, just to the east of Israel.  Things have worn thin at home.  The little town of Bethlehem – ironically, the 'house of bread' in Hebrew – has no bread.  A famine is on, and something’s got to give.  People need to eat.  Some are getting desperate. 

Ever move to a different country?  How about a different part of the country?  It’s harder than you think. 

Dad’s name is Elimelech.  Call him Eli if that helps.  His wife is Naomi, and his two boys are Mahlon and Chilion.  You are on your own with those two.  Things are bad enough that they pack their belongings and leave Bethlehem for points East.  They move right out of Israel.  Elimelech takes his wife and kids and moves to the neighboring country of Moab.  The US to Canada.  Russia to China.  Taiwan to North Korea. 

There isn’t a one of us whose people hasn’t immigrated or emigrated at some point.  As Jews from Bethlehem, Elimelech and his family become refugees in a foreign land, resident aliens, like so many today, they are economically challenged outsiders.  They have left family and friends, roots and heritage.  They have opened themselves to discrimination and maybe worse.  From the outside, you have a family driven by their circumstances to head into an uncertain future, to live as foreigners among a people of different customs, and who practice a different religion.  And this at a time when people went to war over religion.[ii]  Elimelech, whose name literally means “my God is King,” is probably wondering, “Is God really King?  Where is God in all this, anyway?  Maybe those Moabites with their gods have got it going on.  The grass sure looks greener over there.” 

A famine is just the warm-up though.  Things get worse.  Elimelech dies, leaving Naomi a widow in a foreign land, in a labour-intensive agricultural economy, and in which women were second-class citizens.  Away from her family, Naomi, now more than ever, is dependent upon her two sons.  Sure hope they hang in. 

Things continue on for a few years.  The family remains in Moab, and Mahlon and Chilion grow to strapping manhood.  They marry two locals girls, Orpah[iii] and Ruth.  Then her sons die, one right after the other.  Without her sons, and as a refugee widow in the Ancient Near East, Naomi is exposed and vulnerable.  She has lost her provider.  She has now lost her only remaining hope for survival in her sons, let alone for a family line.  There goes her pension plan.  Naomi is ethnically, socially, financially and even religiously at the bottom.  And three-fold heartbroken.

Identify a time in your life when you felt isolated, alone and vulnerable.  

What circumstance in your own life leads you to question God’s control, maybe even his very existence (a FB friend just messaged me about this very issue)?  

If it helps to focus your thoughts, write it down. 

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[i] This blog post is based on Ruth 1:1-5. 

[ii] So glad we’re past that, aren’t you?   

[iii] I have a theory that Oprah Winfrey’s parents intended to name her Orpah but misspelled it.