There are few passages in the Scripture with more tragedy more tightly packed into them than the opening verses of Ruth. Famine, living as refugees, death of a husband, death of son-in-laws, barren wombs.

Putting yourself in Naomi’s position, you can see how you would be tempted to wonder whether God can take circumstances like those and turn them into something good for His people.

By the end of the book of Ruth, we see however that He has done just that. Without minimizing the pain or difficulties Naomi and Ruth experienced, without those very difficulties, there would be no King David and even more importantly there would have been no King Jesus.

It took the death of a husband to bring the birth of a king.

We need to remember that. I need to remember that. God can do more than we can ask or think. Just because I look at circumstances and say to myself there is no way that God can still keep His promises in the middle of this situation, doesn’t mean that God can’t. He is not limited by what limits us. He is not bound by my imagination. He is more than capable of coming up with a million different ways that I have never thought of of taking terrible circumstances and making Himself look great and doing us good through them.