Naomi had troubles that you would not call light and momentary. She had lost her husband and 2 sons, faced famine and returned to Israel empty and bitter. Empty, apart from her wonderful daughter-in-law Ruth who is loyally clinging to her. And there is another ray of sunshine, it was the time of the barley harvest (Ruth 1:22).
The book of Ruth is full of God’s loving kindness, and we get to see the bigger picture of how God is at work among the pain and the mess. Chapter 1 is fairly bleak, it’s set in the time of the judges, which as we’ve just seen was a time when everyone did what was right in their own eyes. Famine had struck, and Naomi and her husband had moved away from the promised land, to the foreign land of Moab. Her husband had died and her two sons found wives, but tragically they were not God’s people. And then the two sons died, leaving Naomi with 2 foreign daughter-in-laws and no man to support them. How hard life must have felt for Naomi, it was bitter. She tells Orpah and Ruth to return to their people and gods as she plans to head back to Bethlehem. Orpah heads back, but in Ruth, we see the first glimmer of hope. Ruth has become a believer in the Lord! It is amazing, given that all she has seen is suffering and hardship, but from this Israelite family, far from home, she has heard enough about the Lord to make her willing to leave her people and gods and to go with Naomi to a foreign land.
The Lord honours those who honour Him, and Ruth is going to become an incredible part in God’s saving plan for the nations. God is using her light and momentary to troubles to achieve something of eternal significance. We see God’s care for Ruth through a number of “coincidences” that are actually “God incidences”. She happens to end up in the field of Boaz, Boaz is a godly man, who treats people well, more than that, he has heard about Ruth, and her care for Naomi, and his she has come to take refuge under the wings of the Almighty (2:12). But it gets better, Boaz is actually a relative of Naomi and so is in a position to be their redeemer.
In Boaz, we see a shadow our redeemer, who offers us shelter to us at great cost to himself, but we’ll have to wait for tomorrow!
In our reading from Acts 3 we meet another person whose troubles are neither light, nor momentary. He had been lame from birth. When he asked Peter and John for alms, he got more than he bargained for. We see a shadow of the resurrection hope that is offered to all who trust Jesus. He is healed in the name of Jesus, and Luke is keen that we see that the man is now leaping! (Acts 3:8). Some only saw him walking and praising God, but Luke tells us he was leaping. Why is that important? Because Isaiah tells us this a sign pf the Messiah’s work, and it points us forward to the day of everlasting joy and sorrow and sighing fleeing away (Isaiah 35:6, 10).
What a wonderful picture for those who suffer with disability now, for those trusting in Jesus there will be a resurrection and eternal joy and leaping!
Lord, please give us this perspective today, that we may see our present troubles and light and momentary compared to the eternal weight of glory in store for your people. Thank you that there is a bigger picture. Please give us a glimpse of that today. Amen
Light and Momentary Troubles 
Leave a comment