NAOMI-A GREAT WOMAN



Imagine losing everything within a very short period of time, your husband, your sons; I will probably lose the will to continue living. Depression and stress will become part of our lives (to most of us), especially if you don’t have any friends or family to lean on.
This is what happened to Naomi. Before we dive more into her story, here is a little bit about what happened to me, few years ago….

Love is a special thing. When you have love, you have almost everything and you believe that you can conquer everything. I had a very special friend whom I valued a lot. Being a young woman, full of energy and dreams, I gave my all to the relationship little did I know that it was doomed to fail.

My case is different from that of Naomi. She had a husband. She had two sons. She was a happy mother. Her pain could not be compared to mine. I went through heartbreak and it felt like the end of me, she went through permanent loss.

How did Naomi find herself in this situation?
The book of Ruth in the Bible explains in detail everything about her. She was an Ephrathite from Bethlehem. She was forced to move into the foreign land of Moab due to famine. I can imagine the anxiety of a fresh beginning; she and her family had all these questions going through their minds:
1. Will the owners and residents of Moab welcome us?
2. What is the environment like? (Having come from a bread and meat land-this had to definitely send a chill down their spine)
3. What will happen if not accepted?.......

The list is endless but just like her name suggests, Naomi-pleasantness. She was a happy woman before tragedy struck on her door. She admits in Ruth 1:21 “I went away full…..” She had everything in life.
Tragedy number one….her husband died.
Number two…ten years later…her two sons also followed the same course as their father.
Living in a foreign land, with only her daughters-in-law to console her, and few friends she still found the strength to continue with life. She was up to date with the current events too. In the same book,
 Ruth 1:6 “When she heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of His people by providing food for them, Naomi and her two daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there.” Despite her loss, she wanted to start all over again. Build a life with her people. She was an impeccable woman.
Going through this book has really strengthened me…no matter what we go through, as long as we are alive; we must gather the strength to move on. I will summarize by quoting this verse Ruth 4:16 “Then Naomi took the child, laid him on her lap and cared for him.”
She returned to her people, build a life with the only daughter-in-law whom she had remained with. The book closes on a happy note.

Life has its storms, but it’s the will and strength that we face those storms with that determines our end. Today might have been a very bad day for you, or even a worse one-like the day my so valued relationship ended, I lost everything, gave up the will to live, resigned from work, changed my looks; anyone who saw me that time judged me without even being told what I was going through..

Today, I am a happy woman, full of life and dreams (better dreams that the ones I had before) and I know that tomorrow will be far better than today and yesterday. You can feel the same…start over, dream dreams again and most importantly, go out to ensure that those dreams become a reality.
In the next post…
I will talk about in-depth character traits of Naomi that made her stand out as woman and a mother-in-law too!

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