365 Days of the Great Names of God, Day 219: God of Naomi

God of Naomi

“In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a man from Bethlehem in 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 Naomi...'" (Ruth 1:1,2a NIV)

“The days when judges ruled” were not happy days for the children of God. They kept forgetting about Him when things were good, then crying out to Him when things were desperate. (It reminds me of someone I know pretty well...her name starts with “Eliza” and ends with “Beth.) The people needed a godly king to guide them to God, but in the absence of one, God raised up judges (think less gown-and-gavel, more governor) to rule over them.

Against this backdrop, we meet Elimelech and his wife, Naomi. Note where they were from: “Bethlehem in Judah.” Right away, we have a Big Deal Fact. With the whole of God’s Word at our disposal, we know what Naomi and her family did not: Jesus, the coming Messiah, would be the Lion from the tribe of Judah, and He would be born in Bethlehem. God was using the story of their lives to write His much grander story.

But when we first encounter Naomi, she is still very much living in the land of not knowing how her story was going to play out. She has left her homeland and her people and settled in a foreign land with foreign people and foreign (and, more to the point, false) gods. There, she has acquired two daughters-in-law but lost her husband and sons. Bereft, she travels back to her hometown with a tag-along Moabite daughter-in-law in tow.

When she gets into town, her people greet her enthusiastically, but she tells them (and I'm paraphrasing here), “Don’t call me Naomi. Call me ‘Bitter,’ because the Lord has ruined my life.” 

"'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'" (Ruth 1:20, 21, NIV).

I know Ruth is the leading lady of her own book, but I have to say Naomi is my personal nomination for Best Supporting Actress in a Biblical Drama. I believe the fact that God inspired this portion of His Word gives us permission to feel and express the full range of our emotions to Him. After all, Naomi changed her own name (normally, name-changing was God’s domain) and blatantly blamed God for her misery. The book of Ruth does not record any response on God’s part, but can’t you just imagine Him thinking, “Naomi, my precious daughter, just wait. I’m not finished yet.”

And He’s not finished with you yet either, my friends. Maybe God is asking you to move, too. Maybe to a new home, or maybe to a new job, new church, new friendship, or new ministry. If you are willing (or even willing to be made willing), God can and will use you to sing His song of salvation. You don’t have to understand how; you only have to trust Who. After all, when Naomi set out from Bethlehem in search of food, she had no idea she’d one day be returning to her hometown with the woman who would be part of the family tree of the Bread of Life.

"When suffering shatters the carefully kept vase that is our lives, God stoops to pick up the pieces. But he doesn't put them back together as a restoration project patterned after our former selves. Instead, he sifts through the rubble and selects some of the shards as raw material for another project—a mosaic that tells the story of redemption" (Ken Gire).

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God, when I am bitter about something You have taken from me, help me to trust in Your goodness and hold on for the something better you have for me.