RUTH: From Pain to Recovery and Restoration

In the previous post, we dealt with the subject of pain and how we all experience it at different points in our lives, with a focus on what we do with our pain. In this follow-up post, we are going to learn from the life of Ruth, practical steps to ensure recovery and restoration having gone through pain.

For starters, Ruth is one of the shortest, yet loaded books of the Bible. Reading Ruth with New Testament lenses, one begins to see the 4-chapter book littered with God’s ultimate plan of redemption, concealed as in types and shadows. In the nearest future, we hope to run a series on the book of Ruth on this blog.

Who was Ruth? She was Naomi’s daughter-in-law, she was a widow just like Naomi and Orpah, her sister-in-law. She was a Moabite and by implication an outcast from the assembly of the Lord and alien to the commonwealth of Israel (Deuteronomy 23: 3-4). Ruth is set at a time when Israel was embroiled in a political and spiritual leadership crisis and were being led by judges. Ruth experienced the loss of her father-in-law, husband, brother-in-law and later on, her sister-in-law who chose to return to her people instead of continuing to Bethlehem of Judea. I know what my family went through when my aunt lost her husband, but for Ruth, she lost four people and more! How did she transit from pain to full recovery and restoration?

1.      She was determined (Ruth 1: 16-19): Ruth made up her mind to leave her past, her pain and all it contained behind in Moab and continue toward Bethlehem. Do you know that for Ruth, leaving Moab was another loss - of family, her gods, people-, the familiar and her inheritance as she was embracing an uncertain future? I am aware some nations don’t allow dual citizenship and if you choose to embrace another country’s citizenship, you forgo your right to lay claims to any inheritance left by your family. This has caused no small stir in some families whose children, especially male children, have opted to jettison their citizenship for another. Ruth was in a similar dilemma but determined she’d had enough. Like Ruth, make up your mind to let the past pass, or you will pass with the past. It’s about time you stopped holding on to your pain, rehearsing your failure or wallowing in it.

2.      She got to work (Ruth 2: 2): After moving to Bethlehem Ruth got to work! Even though Bethlehem means the house of bread and she and Naomi arrived at barley harvest season, she didn’t sit around and throw a pity party. She had every reason to but she chose differently. Scripture says there is a time for everything, mourning is for a season. All over scripture, mourning is recognized albeit not forever: Abraham mourned Sarah, Joseph mourned Jacob, the Israelites mourned Moses. When we wallow in grieve, we rob ourselves of chances for any appreciable progress. We do not grieve as those who have no hope.  The Israelites couldn’t progress until they stopped mourning. I remember my aunt went out and got a teaching job some weeks after her husband’s burial, life had to continue, she had three mouths to feed. Ever since she has engaged in different small businesses and is in the process of setting up a school of her own. It was in the process of working that God connected Ruth with Boaz.

3.      She heeded counsel (Ruth 3: 5): Ruth took counsel- not just any counsel, mind you- but godly counsel. And she heeded it to the letter. The prescription given by Naomi for Ruth to get Boaz’s attention was what obtained in the day’s culture, this puts to rest any speculation that may suggest Ruth was giving herself up cheaply. In your journey to recovery, surround yourself with counselors and heed godly counsel because, in the multitude of counselors, there is safety. Like Ruth, be open to God and His people.

Ruth reveals a plain truth which everyone who cares to pay attention to and understand will agree with: Pain is real. But recovery and restoration is more real and runs deep down, from the inside out, when we turn ourselves over to God and to His people.

The outsider Ruth was not born into the faith and felt no natural part of it- like many of us. But Ruth, by her decision to let go of her pain, get to working and heed counsel went on to detach herself from the curse and pain and got enlisted as a matriarch of the Messiah, thus experiencing full recovery and restoration. Have you experienced pain? It is time to experience recovery and restoration.

At what points in your life have you experienced recovery and restoration? We would love to celebrate God’s work in you as well as cheer you on in the process, do spare some minutes and share with us in the comment section.