This month my team and I did a devotional on the book of Ruth. I have read this book before, it is short and can be read in its entirety in one sitting. My team decided to take a week and really dive into it. For the purposes of this blog I am only really going to focus on the first chapter…. because that is where I had my epiphany.
In summary Ruth chapter 1 is about Naomi. Naomi is from Bethlehem (the holy land) and she leaves Bethlehem with her husband (Elimelech) and her two sons (Mahlon and Chilion) for Moab. But soon after arriving in Moab Naomi’s husband died, leaving her with two children. Each son took a wife one named Orpah and the other Ruth. Then after about ten years Mahlon and Chilion died, too. Naomi was upset…as any person would be after they lost their spouse and two children.
Now the country of Moab had run out of food so Naomi and her two daughters in law set out to return to Bethlehem. On the way to Bethlehem Naomi tells Orpah and Ruth to return to their families because she has no other sons for them to marry and even if she did at this point they would be too old to marry her child. Orpah takes Naomi up on this offer and leaves for her family in Moab. Ruth however tells Naomi that she has been adopted into her family and the she will return to Bethlehem with Naomi.
Naomi and Ruth return to Bethlehem. And as it is true with any small town when Naomi and Ruth returned it caused a stir in the town. The people kept questioning her if she was Naomi and Naomi said to them “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty has brought Calamity upon me?” Ruth 1: 20
PAUSE!
Read again what I have underlined.
Let me explain what she just said. Naomi means pleasant. Mara means bitter.
Naomi just told everyone “Do not call me PLEASANT; call me BITTER, for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me.”
PAUSE!
Reflect on that for a second just think about how honest Naomi is being right now.
She is telling everyone God took my husband and two sons away from me, then on top of that he did not provide us with food…so yeah I am bitter with God because he did me wrong.
PAUSE!
Now think when is the last time (maybe not in the same words) that you told God what he was doing was wrong or questioned his path or got mad at him because life is not the fairytale you want it to be.
Honesty moment.
I know I was bitter for most of my life. It’s something I thought I worked through when I came back to God in college. I thought I had accepted the path God had for my life and left behind the grudge/bitterness I had towards him.
Why I was bitter, was because by the time I was in 14 my two Grandmother’s, my Grandpa, and my dad had all died. This lead to the beginning of my bitterness towards God, it lead me to stray away from God and start living for the world. The world’s idea of coping through pain is the use of drugs and alcohol so I dived deep into this rabbit hole. I dived deep enough that the pain I had inside I could no longer feel.
Then once in college my Poppy died, he was my Dad’s Dad….my last real living connection to my dad (or at least that is what I let the devil told me). I dived deeper into the rabbit hole. I wanted to stop feeling the pain that God was causing.
Through the process of realizing what I really needed with a Counselor and going to a bible study group at school I realized what I needed in my life was God. So I accepted him back into my life, I laid my sins at his feet. I thought I am good. Jesus and I are back to being best friends.
Fast Forward.
This brings me back to the first day my team had our devotional time with Ruth. I got to the part of scripture that I underlined at the beginning and I read it repeatedly and God laid it on my heart that I was calling myself Mara, I was calling myself bitter.
So I read the passage like this ““Do not call me Leslie; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt bitterly with me.” I sat with this for a few minutes and realized how true it was. I had built a wall of bitterness and then put a blinder on so that I could not see it. I had to remind myself that Leslie means garden of holly not bitter, and my name is not Mara it is Leslie.
Leslie is the name my mother gave me and the name God planned to be mine and only mine.
I sat there and stared at my journal where I had written “my name is not Mara it is Leslie! I proclaim in the name of Jesus that I will no longer call myself Mara”.
Because bitterness is the easy answer and God does not even accept our bitterness. The evidence of this is in Ruth chapter 2 God does not call Naomi, Mara but by her name because he is setting a standard right there, we do not get to tell him how he sees us, we are always “pleasant” or “a garden of holly” in his eyes.
And yes bad things happen but they don’t happen without reason it says, in 2 Corinthians 1: 3-4 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”
PAUSE!
God just explained why bad things happen. He wants us to help others who are going through the same storms that we have walked through. God is first going to comfort us and make sure that we are great. Then he wants us to show the comfort he gave us to those around us, so that they can also see the comfort and love of God.
This means that yes life might not be fun right now but you are not alone. There is always someone out there can help you and in return you can help too.
I just wanted to post this blog to tell all y’all what God has done in my life and how he has open a door to who I really am.
Also, random but kind of cool fact. When my squad was at our Philippines debrief I stayed in the room named “Naomi’s Attic” …. I think God was sending me a sign of what he had coming for this previous month in Zimbabwe.
