Lessons From RuthSýnishorn

Whether you are in Christ after a devastating life change or still unsure, you must decide if you want to gain victory over your feelings, circumstances, and ultimately align your life with the will of God. To do so, you will have to come under God’s refuge. 

You may wonder what that looks like for you. Let’s look at Ruth’s response to the death of her father-in-law and husband. Naomi, in her grief, wanted to return home alone. I believe her reasoning was good and unselfish as she knew that she could not birth her daughters-in-law any more sons to marry. Even if she did, it wouldn’t work out because they would be too old by the time they grew to give her grandchildren. She repeatedly insisted that they stay back in their hometown. The Bible says that Ruth clung to her as they wept. I believe that God knitted a connection between them, and deep-down Ruth believed she needed to stay with Naomi. “But Ruth replied, ‘Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go, I will go, and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God, my God’.” (NIV) Her statement not only signifies her conversion to faith in God, but her surrender to His will and plan as well. 

When we feel the disappointments of things that God has allowed, yet know He could have changed, we tend to isolate ourselves from people and even from God as we wallow in our pain. Yet, we intrinsically know that we need the strength of God. 

I have felt great disappointment in my life. I wrestled with depression, not wanting to pray in fear that my prayers were landing on deaf ears. God had already allowed the death of my child. He had permitted me to endure a dreadful divorce. God had witnessed my aunt’s suffering and untimely death from cancer. In those dark moments, when I separated my heart from prayer and from reading the Word of God, I learned that God’s refuge had not left me. I was still safely in His arms.  

We will walk through things that we may never understand on this side of Heaven. However, we have to find our refuge, our safety, in Jesus Christ, the Word, and prayer. 

No matter what we face in this life by way of trials, death, disappointment, etc., there is always safety when we remain faithful to God, our refuge.