A Theology Of Problems Series

than a friend to man, and this is more than man can handle.

Famine destroys plans and dreams. It forces people to make

radical decisions, and this book starts with a man named

Elimelech who was forced by the famine to take his wife and

two sons, and move away from Bethlehem to the Gentile

land of Moab. The problems begin to multiply like fruit flies

on a rotten banana. The whole external world is messed up,

and that messes up a lot of lives, and so you have the third

problem,

3. A FINANCIAL PROBLEM. Here is one of many families

who cannot make it in Israel. They have to pull up roots,

and become refugees, hoping for a better life in a foreign

land. But sometimes the solution to a problem leads to other

problems, and they might even be worse than the problem

they are meant to solve.

Back in the mid 1800's millions of blackbirds deviating

from their normal migratory pattern decided to land on the

farm of Dr. Fredric Dorsey, in the state of Maryland. He

tried everything to get them to fly away, but to no avail.

Guns and firecrackers were ineffective. So he scattered

wheat soaked in arsenic over his fields. The blackbirds,

eager to wash the foreign substance from their throats,

rushed to the new by stream, and millions of them dropped

dead in that stream. By the next morning the congestion of

dead birds had dammed up the stream, and Dorsey's farm

was flooded and completely under water. His solution was

worse than the problem.

4. A FAMILY PROBLEM. This problem runs through all

the other problems, for it is the family that suffers in a world

of stress. The family is pushed and pulled and pummeled by

the negative circumstances. Bad government hurts the

family; bad crops and bad economy hurts the family; bad

environment and rootlessness hurts the family. In verse 3

the ultimate in family problems hits us, as Elimelech dies,

and leaves his wife and two boys without a husband and

father. Put this on film, and you've got a tear-jerker, and we

haven't reached the bottom of the pit even yet. The next two

verses describe two of the shortest biographies of history.

Mahlon and Kilion, the two boys of Naomi were married

and buried, and thats it. It says they lived ten years with

their wives, but their were no children, and they both died

suddenly.

We are five verses into this story, and already every male

has been removed from the stage by death, and we are left

with three widows. The subtitle of this book could be,

Murphy's Law In History, which says, if anything can go

wrong, it will. You can count on it, Naomi believed in this

law. The book of Ruth read superficially sounds like a story

of trivialities, but when you see with your heart, and enter

into the setting, and feel the emotions involved, you see it as

a story of profound tragedy, and of how faith triumphs over

tragedy. It is a book about the real world. The world of loss

and grief and stress, and one problem after another. The

whole book deals with problem after problem.

How do widows survive?

How do mother-in-laws, and daughter-in-laws relate?