Ruth 1:20  “Don’t call me Naomi,” she told them. “Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The Lord has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.” (NIV)

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Sometimes, we feel like God is mistreating us when he is actually preparing us for his best gifts and most important opportunities. 

Naomi’s name means sweetness. By this time in her life, she thought she would be a sweet little old grandmother. Instead, she was a bitter widow. Both of her sons had died. She was alone in the world except for a woman from a people group that the people of Israel dared never love again. 

This is why she told her friends to call her Mara. It means bitterness. 

God, in his kindness, had not completely left her bereft. We see this in verses 8-13. She blesses them by saying, “May the Lord show you kindness, as you have shown kindness to your dead husbands and to me.” God’s kindness was still in effect, still at work in the life of a woman who considered herself all alone in the world. And this wasn’t the end of God’s kindness at work in her life. 

In 2:20, we see God’s kindness at work as people express kindness to Naomi and Ruth. 

Fast forward to the end of the book. In 4:13, the text tells us the story of God’s ultimate kindness to Naomi and Ruth. Naomi became what her name prophesied. She was a sweet little old grandmother. She was as happy as she could be. 

This happy family became the forebears of Israel’s greatest king as well as the King of All Kings. What poor old Naomi at first thought caused a bitter ending to her life turned out to be a better ending than she could have otherwise imagined. 

Since it was a couple of generations before David was born, Naomi never got the full story of how good God had been to her until she got to heaven. 

God’s last, best kindness is discovering what happened in this world because of our faithfulness in the good times and bad, when we were happy, and when we were sad. He who never wastes suffering and pain is waiting patiently to bless us again.

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I may experience bitterness now, but I will ultimately experience unending blessedness.

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Our Father, there are a lot of bitter things in this world that inevitably spill into our lives. Empower us to see them clearly from your perspective, to respond to them appropriately, and to trust you to turn our bitterness into blessings. Amen.