Reassurance: Scripture for your day from the Book of Ruth – 1: 10-13

“¹⁰ they (the daughters-in-law said to her), “We will go back with you to your people.”

¹¹ But Naomi said, “Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands? ¹² Return home, my daughters; I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me—even if I had a husband tonight and then gave birth to sons— ¹³ would you wait until they grew up? Would you remain unmarried for them? No, my daughters. It is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord’s hand has turned against me!”

It’s perhaps the darkest realization we can have. To think the Lord’s hand is against us. This is the climax point of Naomi’s back-and-forth with her daughters-in-law. She feels that to stay with her, they too will experience the bitterness, the loss and the pain, that she’s experienced.

And she sees her trials as the Lord’s hand against her. Like, Paul, ‘I was given a thorn in my flesh.’ (2 Cor. 12:7)

We know from Scripture that the Lord will allow trials to come (remember Job also), but only with the promise that He will never leave us with that ‘beyond which we can bear’ (1 Cor 10:13) and that He can, does and will work ‘all things for good’ (Genesis 50:22, Romans 8:28).

Naomi’s reached the bottom. And there she’ll find a life-changing assurance through Ruth, that points us to God’s incredible faithfulness in Jesus.