After the tragedy in verses 1 – 5, Naomi hears that God has blessed His people back in Judah with food, and decides to return back to her homeland. Naomi is heading back to her hometown. What she cannot know and does not know is that she is on an unlikely journey to joy. Sometimes God uses the pain of our shattered dreams in our lives to awaken within us the longings deep within ourselves for God. In many of our cases, I believe that it takes an experience like what Naomi and Ruth experienced to provide the ground for the Holy Spirit to plough and work, which ultimately brings forth those longings for God. And when we realize these longings, then we are on our way to a kind of joy that we could not experience otherwise.
There are several important things to note just in this particular verse, verse 6. First, note that God is the one that provides food for His people, just as in the first section God was the one that took away he provision from His people. Through His abundant grace, God is the one who provides for us. We may work and strive and plan, but it is ultimately God who provides. David Atkinson, in his commentary, The Message of Ruth, states, “Here is a central theme in the Bible: all of life is traced directly to the hand of God. To concentrate primarily on second causes may encourage us to seek to be manipulators of the system. It is concentration on the Great Cause what teaches us to live by faith.”[1] And just as God provides food for his people in Judah, God allows Naomi to hear about His goodness and provision in Moab. Provision may constitute a knowledge of blessing, as well as the blessing itself. Also note that this is only one of two times in the entire book of Ruth that God is referenced outside of dialogue between characters. The other instance is Ruth 4:13, where the narrator states that God gave Ruth and Boaz a son. These two verses act as bookends to the whole story of Ruth. The first bookend is the provision of food for the people in Judah, for their immediate blessing. The second is a blessing of provision, a son, not only for Ruth and Boaz, but for God’s people throughout history. This is an eternal blessing. Read the rest of this entry »
