1/11/2008 Managing the mess

Have you noticed how messy life gets… how things don’t turn out the way you thought they would? When life gets like that, it’s not what’s happening in your life that’s important; it’s who is managing the mess.

You can bet that Naomi didn’t plan her predicament. She and her husband had gone to Moab to search for food in a time of famine. Their sons married two upstanding Moabite women, and life was good… for a while. But when we meet Naomi in the Scriptures, she is destitute in and stuck in a foreign land, having lost her husband and both her sons.

Naomi had every right to wallow in the depth of despair. Her pain was very real, and she was honest about it. Yet she obviously had a sense of who was in the control of the situation: “the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty has brought Calamity upon me.”

The word Almighty in Hebrew is Shaddai. It’s the name for God that means he is the cosmic ruler who is in charge of everything. It means he can do whatever he wants to do. Nobody can hold back his hand. He is completely capable.

The word translated Lord is the Hebrew word Yahweh, which refers to the covenant-keeping God. The God who promised his people that no matter what they went through, he would ultimately deliver them and care for them. Yahweh points to God’s faithfulness

I can’t help but notice the significance of the fact that Naomi put these two names of God together. In the midst of her complaint, she lived with the confidence that her capable, faithfull God would ultimately lead them to Victory!

This is not just a story in the Old Testament. This is about our God who never changes. God manages our lives for good and glorious outcomes. You can count on that. For he’s not just Shaddai; he is Yahweh. And he’s not just Yahweh; he’s Shaddai, the Lord Almighty.

You ca trust him to manage the mess in your life