Behind God's frowning providence

I know the story of Ruth by heart because I listened to its corresponding Adventures in Odyssey episode at least 20 times during my childhood. My brother and I popped in the tape—this one called “Three Funerals and a Wedding”—and we milled around the kitchen making boxed macaroni and cheese. Our ears pricked when Naomi cried out, “Don’t called me Naomi! Call me Mara! Bitter! The Lord has dealt bitterly with me.”

Naomi sounded impossibly hostile. If you don’t know the story, Naomi lost not only her husband but also her two sons (respectively named sickly and wasting consumption). Within 10 years, her life as a well-known community member among God’s people metamorphosed into an existence defined by aloneness, exile, and triple grief.

But I was 9 years old as I listened and was busy with boxed macaroni and cheese. The crumbling of Naomi’s life, for me, was just the pathway to the happy ending. I knew that Ruth would find Boaz, lie down at his feet, and wind up with Obed the bouncing baby. Naomi’s joy would return. The family wouldn’t starve. Redemption was already en route. In fact, if I didn’t pause the tape, it would show up in exactly 30 minutes.

Years later I heard a preacher say that suffering is never artificial when it happens to you. I gave him my enthusiastic belief, but I didn’t yet know what he meant. Fast forward a few more years and I learned by experience that “behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face.” God’s designs are bright. His will is not only sovereign but also infinitely tender toward His people.

On the way home from church last Sunday, my husband and I mulled over the contents of Ruth 1, the subject of the morning sermon. There are two groups of people, the pastor had said: those who have experienced intense suffering and may even feel singled out for it and those who live in fear that intense suffering will one day come upon them. And when you suffer greatly, your true theology shows.

I can’t disagree. I sifted through my own experience while Jonathan drove, searching for times of suffering. I came back to the surface with two: first, my college heartbreak, a prolonged, dramatic, self-induced event that threatened both my emotional and physical health, and second, the depression and illness that attended the end of my college experience. In each case I had responded to pain by casting about blindly, looking for someone to blame. But I knew deep in my heart that I was angry with Frowning Providence. I wished redemption would come in 30 minutes, but in each instance it took longer than a year.

Naomi was right about one thing: She knew God was in control. She didn’t apologize for Him, or pretend that she suffered because He was too busy to help. And through one woman’s tragedy—enormous to her, but taking up only a few chapters of God’s Book—Jesus came. Jesus, who has suffered all our sorrows. He knows.