Ruth 1 cont.

2. There is providence in loss. Naomi could only feel emptiness - yet she returns at the beginning of the harvest. As we enter the new year, perhaps we look back and see losses - those who have backslidden, or those who truly are lost. Yet as we walk by faith into the future, could it be that we are approaching the beginning of a harvest? When people face loss and pain, sometimes we will pray that God might bring some good out of it. But doesn't our faith reach out for the possibility that God might do more than that? That He might do something great, that he might bring life where there was death, that He might give sight where there was blindness, that He might give fullness where there was emptiness. Do not limit the Lord to what you think is possible - He "is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think." (Ephesians 3v20)