Fellowship In Sufferings

Well, good morning, Moody Church.

It's great to see all of you.

We are jumping back into our series today, Mercies in the Shadows, as we look at the book of Ruth, this 3,000-year-old story found in the Old Testament.

It's a story that is dominated by tragic loss and sorrow and grief.

Last week, if you will remember, if you were with us, we saw Naomi's life completely unravel.

She lost her husband, her two adult sons, and that not only meant that she had to stand by three different gravesides and mourn their loss, it also meant in her ancient Near Eastern patriarchal world that she lost a lot of things.

She lost her income.

There was no one to work the fields.

She lost her legal representation in society.

She lost her ability to inherit property, which was only passed down through the male line.

And so Naomi's life has been dominated now with no hope, no future, and she has nowhere to turn.

This is grief upon grief upon grief.

And if you know anything about grief, many of us do, you'll know that grief is a very painful journey, isn't it? In 1969, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, in her definitive book on death and dying, introduced us to what has now been popularly known as the five stages of grief.

The grief is, it's not a linear process, it is a patched up mess of emotions, but it has five discrete elements.

There's denial, this can't be happening.

There's anger, I don't like this, who do I blame? There's bargaining, manipulating, trying to regain control.

There's depression, I'm just too sad to do anything.

And then finally, eventually, after a long last, there's acceptance and peaceful resignation to the new reality and embracing that and going forward.

Now in the book of Ruth here, we're going to watch Naomi in particular as she moves through these stages of grief.

And we're going to see her throughout this book crying and then at other times angry and bitter and lashing out and depressed and eventually coming to see hope in the midst of her circumstances.

But grief is a messy thing, isn't it? We're all over the place.

And one of the things we most need in the midst of our grief is someone to love us through it, who won't quit on us, no matter how messy or hard it gets, especially when it's messy or hard.

Someone who loves us enough to go the distance, to see us through all of the drama of what we will go through, to stay close to us and love us through to the other side, to see us at our absolute worst.

and love us still the same.

There's a special Hebrew word for this kind of love, and it is chesed.