Bible in 365 Days – Day 97

Focus Chapters:

• Ruth 1-3
• Ruth 4:1-12

 

Standout Verse(s):

Ruth 1:11-13 NLT

But Naomi replied, “Why should you go on with me? Can I still give birth to other sons who could grow up to be your husbands? No, my daughters, return to your parents’ homes, for I am too old to marry again. And even if it were possible, and I were to get married tonight and bear sons, then what? Would you wait for them to grow up and refuse to marry someone else? No, of course not, my daughters! Things are far more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord himself has raised his fist against me.”

 

Observation (s):

1. Naomi thought that God had stopped blessing her and had turned His back on her.
   
   

   Things are far more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord himself has raised his fist against me.”

   
   
2. Naomi thought of solutions based on her limitations. She believed that conventional methods were the only ways through which she and her daughter-in-laws’ problems could be solved.
   
   

   But Naomi replied, “Why should you go on with me? Can I still give birth to other sons who could grow up to be your husbands? No, my daughters, return to your parents’ homes, for I am too old to marry again. And even if it were possible, and I were to get married tonight and bear sons, then what? Would you wait for them to grow up and refuse to marry someone else? No, of course not, my daughters!

Application:

Most humans are “boxed in”; operating inside the proverbial “box”. As we age, our brains become increasingly more ingrained into familiar patterns and routines. It’s pity that we get comfortable in this place and constrain ourselves and God to our manner of thinking.

Naomi suffered from a similar complex. She could not conceive that God could provide a solution to her problems that went paradoxically against all the mainstream solutions her “boxed-in thinking” could conceive. Her focus was on two things:

1. She had lost her providers, her husband and sons. According to her reasoning, the only possible way to have another set of providers was for her get married and bear more children, in her old age. She ruled out this solution as inconceivable.
2. She was also bitter, believing that God had stopped blessing her.

It is interesting that a woman who speaks so passionately of God, focused solely on her own limitations and what seemed to be withheld blessings. She forgot Israel’s history which showed constant proof of God’s unconventional nature.

God is not bound by conventional human thinking or constraints. He doesn’t operate within a box! In your bitter moments when no conventional solutions seem probable, rejoice! Believe that your God of the unconventional thinking is already making an unpredictable way.