Spend time in prayer and silence with God asking him to meet you and speak to you.
Bible Reading
So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. Then he went to her, and the LORD enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son. The women said to Naomi: “Praise be to the LORD, who this day has not left you without a kinsman-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel! He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth.”
Then Naomi took the child, laid him in her lap and cared for him. The women living there said, “Naomi has a son.”
– Ruth 4:13-17
Devotion
The story of Ruth has a happy ending. Most of the time our suffering seems to serve no purpose while we are going through it. When we are in the storm, we can never see the beauty of the future restoration. Certainly, neither Ruth nor Naomi could have imagined an ending like this while they were grieving the loss of the men in their family. They would have imagined blight and poverty. In that culture, they would have not only had to deal with the loss of the people, but also the bleak future of life without a provider. For a woman in that day, those struggles would be difficult to overcome. God has a way, however, of completing stories with evidence of His faithfulness. Still, God used every part of their story.
When we look back we often are grateful for the pain we endured, though we would not hope to go through it again. Most of the time, life leads us to a place where we are able to see at least some purpose in our trials. Usually that realization does not come as quickly as we would like it to come. In some circumstances, we may never understand the purpose of a trial or see God’s work through it. As we will see tomorrow, God sometimes has plans and purposes that we could never see in our lifetime. He can even use our trials and tragedies in the process of accomplishing his purposes.
The Big Question
Are you facing a trial where you can’t see God’s hand or how He could use that circumstance for good? How can you begin or continue to trust God with that circumstance?
Conclude in prayer and silence reflecting on what you’ve learned.