The Bitter Made Sweet
I’ll never forget the first time that I tried cocoa. Not chocolate, but pure cocoa powder. My childish logic seemed air-tight. Chocolate tastes good, and cocoa is the chief ingredient in chocolate. Therefore, cocoa must also taste good. Wrong. The bitter flavor of cocoa powder makes the Hershey’s label feel like false advertising.
In similar fashion, God’s people often feel wronged when life doesn’t not go as they expected. A mere three days after crossing the Red Sea, Israel grumbles at the waters of Marah–named after their bitter and undrinkable nature (Exodus 15:23-24). Why in the world would God save them from the world’s greatest superpower via water, only for them to die of thirst a few days later? Egypt had made their lives “bitter with difficult labor” (Exodus 1:14). Marah was a painful reminder of their previous life. It felt like false advertising.
A few books later in our Bibles, another Israelite family experiences a sort of “anti-exodus.” Just as Jacob’s family traveled to Egypt in search of food, Elimelech and his family leave the Promised Land during a famine to live in Moab. But instead of flourishing, tragedy strikes. Elimelech dies. His two sons follow him into the grave soon after. Elimelech’s wife, Naomi is left all alone with Ruth, her recently widowed Moabite daughter-in-law. With nowhere else to turn, Naomi and Ruth head back to Bethlehem with nothing, a sad inversion of Israel leaving Egypt with the plunder of their oppressors.
Upon their arrival, Naomi unleashes a venomous retort on the women of her hometown:
“Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi, when the Lord has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity on me?” (Ruth 1:20-21)
Naomi simply voices what we are afraid to say. She feels cheated. Why be a member of God’s covenant people if all you receive is pain? She does not doubt God’s existence or power; she doubts his goodness and care.
The bitter moments of life have a way of making us bitter. When we start to doubt God’s love, waning faith and hope are sure to follow. Sometimes suffering comes all at once through cataclysmic events, like the death of a loved one or serious illness. At other times, the world slowly bleeds us dry, death by a thousand papercuts.
The Bible is honest about the difficulty of life under the sun. Our work is often hard and unfulfilling. Relationships sour due to misunderstandings. People sin against us in grievous ways, and though we might recover, a scar remains. We should take great comfort that the reality described by Scripture matches up with our experience, but bitterness is only half of the story.
If Naomi was familiar with the Exodus story, she lost the plot somewhere along the way. She forgot what happened at Marah. God told Moses to throw a tree in the water, the bitter waters became sweet, and he told the Israelites:
“If you will carefully obey the Lord your God, do what is right in his sight, pay attention to his commands, and keep all his statutes, I will not inflict any illnesses on you that I inflicted on the Egyptians. For I am the Lord who heals you” (Exodus 15:26).
This miracle was about more than water. God was revealing his character and might. He cared and he had the power to do something about it. A definitive break from their bitter days in Egypt had occurred, and he would make them whole.
Like Israel in the wilderness, Naomi never cries out to God—she simply vents to those around her. But the Lord is a healer, and he works through unlikely means to bring redemption. Her daughter-in-law Ruth becomes a tangible expression of God’s persistent covenant kindness, sticking with her through thick and thin. In a shocking turn of events, a godly man of Bethlehem named Boaz marries Ruth, and the foreign woman is honored like the matriarchs of Israel (Ruth 4:11-12). As the book draws to a close, Boaz and Ruth have a son named Obed. Baby Obed is placed in Naomi’s lap, and her emptiness is made full. Her once quiet house is filled with joy, laughter, and the pitter-patter of little feet. The heirless widow becomes the great-grandmother of King David (Ruth 4:17). She is Mara no more. Her bitterness has been made sweet.
God has not changed. Without any minimization of pain and heartache, God’s presence in the world gives us real hope. He is not above the fray, removed from the mess. He is in the middle, turning the evil intentions of men and the tragedies of life towards his own glory and our good (Genesis 50:20; Romans 8:28). No one showcases this truth more clearly than Jesus, God’s own Son. Bearing the sins of sinful men to the cross, no one has ever drank a more bitter cup. Rising from the dead with indestructible life, no one else is more qualified to fill the emptiness of sufferers. The empty tomb is a flag planted in historical soil, reminding the world that joy will eventually triumph over sorrow.
Jesus is the Lord, the one who heals us. He pours out his Spirit to tend our deepest wounds in the present, and he will bring a wholeness beyond our wildest dreams on the last day. So do not content yourself with grumbling in the wilderness. Cry out to the one who “never said a mumblin’ word.” Run to the one whose cross makes the bitter waters sweet.
