Oh, My Delight

Names had such significance to ancient peoples. I can only wonder at the names Naomi and Elimelech placed upon their sons. Was it their reflection of God speaking? Of the times? Of the condition of their own faith? I can only speculate, but to call your first born son sick and your other son pining, one can’t help wanting to enter into fuller understanding of their hearts. They’d lived only ten years in Moab, from the absence of God’s presence, before the last male of Naomi’s little family died. So her children here children had brought their names with them from Israel. Somehow Naomi’s and Elimelech’s hopelessness reaches through the pages of time and pricks at my heart.

Will time paint the same picture of me it was painting of Naomi? Will the seasons of my discouragement rename me? I pray not. Though named Naomi, My Delight, somewhere within her journey Naomi renames herself with a reflection of her soul...Mara, Bitterness. Whether life’s circumstances had brought her to this place, or her inner-spirit’s bleakness painted this view of her life, her pain is real. Just as real as the season of my own pain. But God holds out a promise for my heart. A promise held in the naming that was mine before a single foundations of the world was laid down.

Scripture tells me that my own name is Naomi ... I hear the Ever-Existing Eternal One, the Lord My Righteousness calling me My Delight. It doesn’t matter the brush with which I try to name myself, God knows me as the Delight of His heart. Oh, what place of joy, what place of refreshment. And what unfathomable love of God that will not allow ‘bitterness’ to remain, but will bring my soul’s Ruth to restore my knowledge that God has named me for Himself ... named me My Delight.
Ruth 1


© 4 April 5, 2005