When your faith is in tatters
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices
Do not give up hope in your weariness. Your faith is worth holding onto, even when it is in tatters, shredded and abused by the circumstances of life under the curse of sin. This fallen world of ours has a way of draining us and leaving us gasping for breath. Suffering, injustice and persecution will leave us weary, and so will our own sin, after it leads us astray with its false promises. But God will make a way back to Him for you.
Naomi in the Old Testament book of Ruth teaches us that even when our faith is on life-support, we can revive our hope by shifting our focus from this weary world to the one who will redeem us. The book of Ruth opens up with a young Jewish family, a married couple and their two sons: Elimelech, his wife Naomi, and their two boys Mahlon and Chilion. They are living through troubled times in Judah, in the town of Bethlehem. This is God’s promised land, but it feels less than idyllic… There’s no King, and the rulers are unrighteous and they’re spiraling further away from God. And there’s no food, famine has settled on the land. And so, the patriarch Elimelech, in an act of rebellion against God, makes the ill-advised decision to flee Judah. Rather than seek and submit to God’s will within the land of God’s choosing, Elimelech decides to run. He leads his family out of Judah to Moab. He leads them into exile, and then Elimelech promptly dies. Naomi is left alone to raise her two sons in this foreign land. And when they are both grown up and married, and you start to think that her job is done and that she should now be able to be taken care of by her sons’ families, both her sons die childless. Her sons leave behind only two widows, Orpah and Ruth. Naomi is still in exile, where there is no support network for the trio of widows, and she finally accepts that she has come to the end of the road in Moab, she has reached a dead-end. The only way forward is the way back to Bethlehem.
While Orpah starts over in Moab, her homeland, Ruth sticks with Naomi and joins her in Judah, in Bethlehem, in the promised land of God’s people. And as Naomi and Ruth leave Moab and enter back into the promised land, they step through the looking glass into a mirror image world. Naomi, whose name means sweet or pleasant, now calls herself Mara, which means bitter. And she declares that she went away full, and the Lord has brought her back empty. Naomi left amidst a famine and she returns at the beginning of the harvest.
Naomi shows up in Judah empty handed, having been stripped of her ambitions for a better life outside of God’s will. Naomi has lived through an extended season of trials, and her circumstances still appear bleak. There were not too many options available to a widow back in those days in the middle east. And the rulers of Judah are crooked and the people are not righteous, they are not generally inclined to take care of the vulnerable, they are not faithful to God. But the laws of Judah were handed down by God. God’s law is just, and the law does provide hope for the hopeless. So this is the part of the story where we see the dams of God’s Grace are about to burst. Even under unrighteous rule, God’s promised land is a better place for God’s people. Even with a weak faith like Naomi’s, being surrounded by God’s people under God’s law in God’s promised land is a far better place to be. This truth holds up for you today, so plug yourself into a faithful local church and seek to surround yourself with God’s people, spend time in the Bible, get to know and be shaped by God’s love for you, cry out in prayer to God and submit to His will for your life, that is where you will find His blessing.
The laws in Judah were handed by God through Moses to provide for the destitute. The widow Ruth is allowed to glean at harvest time, the law allows for her to pick enough grain to avoid starvation. So Ruth goes out to glean, and by God’s providence she ends up gleaning in the field belonging to an extended family relative of Naomi’s late husband named Boaz, who shows her favour. This is not a stroke of luck! There is no such thing as luck. Only the sweet providence of the one who is sovereign over all things. After Ruth puts in a full day’s work she has an impressive harvest to show for her efforts. When Ruth returns home, Naomi is surprised by Ruth’s haul, and she asks her where it came from. But very quickly, we see that Naomi had figured out that Ruth has found favour with someone, so she quickly exclaims “Blessed be the man who took notice of you.”
It is a telling detail of this exchange that Naomi redirects her thought patterns from focusing on where to focusing on who. This shift is hugely consequential for Naomi, and it is just as important for you.
Elimelech lost sight of who he was living for, and decided to focus on where he was living. He strayed from living for God and pursued a better place to live. He anchored his hope in where he lived, in his circumstances rather than anchoring his hope in the Lord, the one who is sovereign over his circumstances and who is the only trustworthy source of hope.
I invite you to redirect your thought patterns in the same way as Naomi, right now. Let this be your turning point if need be, stop worrying about where you live and focus on who you are living for. Shift your source of hope from your circumstances - no matter how comfortable or dire they are - and focus your mind and heart on the one who is sovereign over your circumstances. Focus on the one who can redeem your circumstances. For Naomi, by God’s provision, the source of her hope is her kinsman-redeemer Boaz.
Although Ruth had not known who he was, Naomi had known this man all along. That was conceivably part of the reason behind the return to Judah… When Naomi was in exile, she had no relatives. But in Judah, while she is still a widow with no children, there are extended relatives like this man, who is worthy, and part of the clan of her late husband. So when Ruth mentions this name Boaz, Naomi immediately knows that this is good news! Ruth has not merely stumbled upon someone who can make a big difference in their lives, Naomi realizes there is even more at play here. So she cries out in praise to God, whose Hesed (steadfast love) has not forsaken her or her family. Naomi praises God who has ordained this turn of events, because he has not forgotten her, he has not abandoned her. God is faithful.
God’s grace does not depend on the strength of Naomi’s faith, her faith was on life support, it barely had a pulse. Yet, it was God who was working in her life all along, He was her provider, He was guiding her path. God was responding to her small act of faithfulness in returning to the promised land. And it was small. It was not because of Naomi’s steadfast faith that she chose to reject the schemes of men like Elimelech and to depend solely on God’s grace. No, she ran out of options, she hit a dead-end, there was no place left for her to run. It is only because of God’s steadfast love that Naomi came to depend on God’s grace. By the merest wisp of tattered and shredded faith that she had left, Naomi returned to Judah spiritually empty. But as she stepped through the looking glass out of Moab into Judah, out of God’s enemy territory and into God’s promised land, she became spiritually filled. No longer bitter. Because she then saw that God was near. In fact He was all along.
If you are clinging to your bitterness, it’s time for you also to put it behind you, because it will not do anything for you but blind you to God’s grace. If you see God’s hand at work in your life as Naomi did, then take up her example and shed your bitterness and turn to God like she did.
Naomi thanks God for her kinsman-redeemer, and so should we praise God for our own kinsman-redeemer. Ours is the perfect kinsman-redeemer who became our kin at Christmas, so that he could become our redeemer. So, when your faith is waning and you feel weary, shift your focus from your circumstances and rejoice! Rejoice as you focus on the birth of your kinsman-redeemer, the one that God has sent for us. Christ is better even than Boaz. Christ is your kinsman, your redeemer, your Lord, your God. He is worthy of your faith.
As you sing along to O Holy Night this Christmas, I hope you are encouraged by the verse “A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices”. We are indeed weary, and there is indeed hope for the weary, even for those whose faith is frayed in their weariness. Turn from focusing on the circumstances of this world, and focus on the incarnation of God who came to exercise His sovereignty over your circumstances. Your redemption does not lie in your own strength, your redemption has already been accomplished by Christ. And do not even trust in the steadfastness of your own faith, it will waver and falter, but trust in God's faithfulness, his steadfast love, his Hesed for you. And see the heart of God for you in the story of Christmas, because you are the object of that love.