Christian Living

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Larry Lilly's Letter Monday August 20, 2007

I have been speaking on the subject of hope and along the way I discovered a number of things worth mentioning, so I plan to write about these truths this week.

The word, hope, is mentioned 122 times in the Bible, with the very first being used by Naomi, the courageous, faithful and practical mother in law of Ruth. Naomi suffered much, but never blamed God and never lost her common sense as do so many of the Lord's people.

Hope is the subject in Ruth 1:12-13: "Turn again, my daughters, go your way; for I am too old to have an husband. If I should say, I have hope, if I should have an husband also to night, and should also bear sons; 13 Would ye tarry for them till they were grown? would ye stay for them from having husbands? nay, my daughters; for it grieveth me much for your sakes that the hand of the LORD is gone out against me.”

In short order Naomi, Ruth and Orpah became widows and that is where we take up the narrative. Naomi is explaining to Ruth that even if she, Naomi married and conceived a child that very day, Ruth and Orpah would be old women by the time the boys grew to maturity. Hope for the normal course was for the brother of the deceased husband to assume by marriage, the responsibility for the widows. This would take upwards of twenty years, so rather than cling to a vain hope, Naomi exercised right reason and gave the mentioned instruction to the two younger women.

Concerning hope, we learn from the law of first mention that while we may not always have a promise from the Lord on which to hang hope for a miracle, we must not overlook the obvious solution. As a result of this practical understanding of God's way in working out hope, Ruth eventually married Boaz, resulting her being in the ancestry of Jesus Christ!

At first glance the situation of the women seemed hopeless, but the calm and balanced understanding of Naomi illustrates the practical truth so graphically stated by Clare Boothe Luce:

"There are no hopeless situations; there are only people who have grown hopeless about them."

Your situation is not hopeless and because this is true you must learn to think beyond the normal and grasp that although the "Red Sea" may not roll back for you, there is a solution that is open to you. You must keep the options for the working of hope open. Helen Keller said, "We often look at the door which has closed, so intensely that we fail to see the door which is open."

Tomorrow I will have an article on hope and true miracles as with Abraham.

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2007 Use with credit

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