How are you doing with your Bible study in the book of Ruth?  Dealing with the losses in our lives can be tough work.

I’ve mulled over day one of Kelly Minter’s study guide a couple of times.  Thoughts are swirling.  Painful things surface to the top.  And one more time I pour out my heart to God.  Reading the study’s suggested scriptures, I identify with Job’s pain while he feels so forgotten by God.  I can see his life from the perspective of knowing how it will end.  And I want to tell him, “There is hope, Job.  There is a Redeemer!  God will make it clear, maybe not in your lifetime, but someday.  Your great trial will encourage me thousands of years later.” 

There is so much I do not understand.  So many questions I would like to ask.  Too much suffering I cannot explain away.  I imagine and I wonder if perhaps that great cloud of witnesses spoken about in Hebrews 12 would like to tell me, “There is hope, Peggy.  God will make it clear, maybe not in your lifetime, but someday.” 

And so I press on with the knowledge I do have:  

• that God is faithful
• that He is good
• that there is a purpose in pain
• that I may confidently approach His graceful throne and expect to receive mercy and grace enough
• that my Redeemer lives and identifies with me
• that my great High Priest runs to my cry (Hebrews 2:18, see below)

There is comfort in that knowledge.  And so I wait with hope that someday I will understand.

Hebrews 2:18 For because He Himself in His humanity has suffered in being tempted (tested, and tried), He is able (immediately) to run to the cry of (assist, relieve) those who are being tempted and tested and tried and who therefore are being exposed to suffering.   (Amplified Bible, emphasis added)