When things don’t go the way we think they should, it’s easy to blame God, isn’t it? That’s certainly what Naomi did at the end of chapter 1. She went so far as to change her name. Naomi means pleasant, and that certainly didn’t match the way she felt. Instead, she wanted to be called Mara, which means bitter.

And Naomi certainly thought she had good reason to be bitter at God. After all, she had lost her husband and her two sons. And all she had left was this Moabite girl who didn’t have the good sense to go back to her people, but instead insisted on coming back to the land of Israel, to a place where she would probably be shunned as a pagan outsider. Neither of these women had anyone to take care of them, so as far as they knew they would be doomed to a life of the most abject poverty. Oh yes, bitter was a good way to describe Naomi at this time. And maybe when we look at the circumstances of our lives we are tempted to feel the same way.

But let’s think again about Naomi’s desperate predicament. Was it really God’s fault that things had turned out that way for her? Her husband Elimelech had chosen to leave the land of Israel and go to Moab – but as we see in Ruth 1:19, there were lots of other Bethlehemites who had chosen to stay there in spite of the famine, who had chosen to tough it out so they could stay in fellowship with God and with God’s people. Moreover, it was Elimelech who had agreed to let his daughters marry Moabite men, in overt defiance of God’s clear command (Deuteronomy 7:3).

So, was it really right for Naomi to blame God for the results of Elimelech’s sins? And isn’t it the case that many of the difficult circumstances of our lives are also a result of our own sinful decisions? So, before we become bitter at God, maybe we should look in the mirror and shoulder our own portion of the blame. For us, maybe repentance would be more appropriate than resentment.

But there’s another reason Naomi shouldn’t have given into bitterness: the agent of her salvation was already with her in the person of Ruth. For in spite of her pagan upbringing, Ruth would prove to be as hardworking and selfless as any Israelite could hope to be. And as we see by the end of the book, God would eventually use Ruth’s devotion to Naomi to save both of them from the poverty that made Naomi so bitter.

And the same thing is true for us. For no matter how big a mess we may have made of our own lives, we are never too far away from God for Him to save us. For in Jesus Christ, God has come to be with us, to save us from our sins and to make us His own people. So instead of becoming bitter, and instead of regretting all our past mistakes, let us remember God’s saving love for us. And let us trust Him as we follow Jesus today.

Ruth 1:15-22 (NASB)

15 Then she said, “Behold, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and her gods; return after your sister-in-law.”
16 But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God.
17 “Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus may the LORD do to me, and worse, if anything but death parts you and me.”
18 When she saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more to her.
19 So they both went until they came to Bethlehem. And it came about when they had come to Bethlehem, that all the city was stirred because of them, and the women said, “Is this Naomi?”
20 And she said to them, “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.
21 “I went out full, but the LORD has brought me back empty. Why do you call me Naomi, since the LORD has witnessed against me and the Almighty has afflicted me?”
22 So Naomi returned, and with her Ruth the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law, who returned from the land of Moab. And they came to Bethlehem at the beginning of barley harvest.