Lay It on Me

D ATERS AND R OMANCERS / 31

hurt or perhaps because of internal strife. Frequently, after several years, they return... carrying wounds and hurts that have never totally healed. Having lost their former identity in the house of God, they return broken and in despair. Bethlehem was Naomi's home, yet it did not feel like home. Bitterness and sorrow can blur your perception of what God has done and what He will do. Naomi left as the wife of Elimelech and returned as a widow. She owned a house and land when she departed, but returned empty-handed. She held her head up before the famine, but 10 years later, her head was hanging low under the weight of bitterness, bankruptcy and brokenness. Then there was Ruth. This beautiful, dark-complected, dark-haired Moabite, listened patiently as Naomi spoke of her own woes. Hurting inside, Ruth had no one to talk to. Nobody was comforting her for her loss and for what she had gone through. Ruth, however, did not look for pity. There is no reason to believe her motive for following Naomi was anything more than a genuine love and concern for her mother-in-law. She did not know that God had already planned for her to meet a handsome Bethlehemite to marry and start a royal family. Naomi probably never realized that standing in her shadow was a young woman who, though a stranger from a cursed land, would become one of the greatest women in Israel's history. Ruth was the best thing to ever happen to Naomi and the best thing that had happened in Bethlehem up to that time.