“He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age.” [Ruth 4:15]
ONE OF THE THINGS I LOVE about the heart and ways of God is that no sooner do we fail or step out of His will, than He begins to unfold His plan (already in place) to redeem our situation and restore us back to Himself. We see this in the life of Naomi and her family after they had fled from Bethlehem to Moab during a time of famine, intending to stay for just a brief time in that godless land but eventually settling there.
Over the course of years, Naomi’s husband died, as well as her two sons, leaving her destitute and lonely with only her widowed daughters-in-law for company. She was far away from home with little to give her life meaning. Hope had ebbed away, and her conversation belied her disappointment with God.
But in seasons of adversity, pressure, and problems, the important question is not so much “Why is this happening to me?” as “What is God doing in this situation, and how can He use it to bring glory to Himself?”
The well-known account of Naomi’s return to Bethlehem with her daughter-in-law Ruth and their redemption through the kindness of Boaz demonstrates that God can take a family reeling from serious failures and missteps and restore them back to a life of purpose—one that redirects their family line—and future generations—to Christ.
You may find yourself at a point where you cannot see a good ending to your situation, having chosen your own or followed another’s straying path away from God’s plan. Yes, there may be more pain to endure, more consequences to encounter. But God can be trusted to work through even the most twisted circumstances of life to fit you for even greater service, to accomplish His kingdom purposes, and to give you a bright and hopeful future.
Are you more focused on your failure or those of others, or on the redemptive plan and purposes of God? Do you believe that God can redeem and restore what may seem to you to be a hopelessly tangled mess, and bring glory to Himself in the process? [The Quiet Place]
