Mara didn’t wear her
bitterness well. Everyone knew she was
bitter. And why wouldn’t she be? From
the forced migration of her family to the death of loved ones, including her
husband and two children, personal loss and tragedy had punctuated Mara’s life.
A widowed woman’s life in the
Middle East is not pleasant, to be sure, but a refugee woman’s life is one to
be most pitied. Isolated by the loss of
community, impoverished by the absence of her breadwinning-husband, preyed upon
without the protection of her tribe and hopeless with little prospect of this
situation changing, it was a bleak existence.
Definitely enough to make even the most pleasant of women bitter.
Mara’s ruined state became too
much so she decided to return to her ruined homeland. Rumors swirled that
things may have improved there, but even if they hadn’t it was far better to
die at home than to suffer away from home.
So Mara packed up what little she had and returned to her city, to
Bethlehem, to the place they knew her by a different name. She and her daughter-in-law, Ruth, would no
longer be refugees and God would soon take away her bitterness.
We know a lot of Maras. Over eighty person of Syrian refugees are war
widows, wives separated from their husbands or children under the age of eighteen. They are vulnerable. They are poor. They are helpless. They are hopeless. But just like Naomi, they have a goel,
a redeemer, that it willing to come to their aid and liberate them from their
suffering, aid them in their travail and love them in their bitterness. Pray with us that many refugee women will
come to know their great Redeemer, Jesus Christ.
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