Naming Myself
“Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.” Ruth 1:20
Mara . . Bitterly – Do you know why Naomi gives herself a new name? That is quite unusual, even in our own day. When someone decides to take a new first name, it usually signals some major turning point in life. For Naomi, taking a new name was an attempt to erase the memories of her past and recognize the tragedy of her present. Naomi, a name that means “delightful and pleasant” changed her name to Mara, a Hebrew word that means “bitter”. In this verse, she plays on the word for “bitter” (mar) to create a name for her new life, Marah (the feminine form of mar).
If you know the story of Ruth, you know why Naomi chose this name of suffering. Her husband and both of her sons died. She was without property, an old woman, returned to the land of her ancestry as a refugee. Her future was grim. From her perspective, God had dealt harshly with her. She must have thought, “What have I done to deserve this pain.” So she chose a name that announced her disappointment with life. She was the woman who lived a life of harsh treatment and stinging suffering.
But God had a different point of view.
That’s really our problem, isn’t it? Life doesn’t go the way we wished. Bad things happen even when we can see no reason for the tragedies. We start to think of ourselves differently. We are no longer the people that God intended us to be when we were born. Now we are people who reflect the tragic circumstances of our lives. We have forgotten or put aside the names that gave us our original identities. We become what life has done to us. What a mistake! God has not forgotten what He had in mind, but we have. We experience abuse at the hands of the world and suddenly we think that God is angry or absent. We let circumstances dictate who we are.
The real story of Naomi is the story of God’s arrangement to bring Ruth, her daughter-in-law, into the lineage of Jesus. Ruth marries Boaz. Had Naomi’s son lived, Ruth would never have met Boaz. Had Naomi’s economic status been different, Ruth would never have married Boaz. And that would mean that Ruth would never have had a son named Obed who was the father of Jesse who was to be the father of David and, eventually, the father of Joseph, married to Mary, the mother of Jesus. The real story of Naomi is a story that was written ages before she was born and centuries after she died. She was delightful to the Lord, chosen to be in the line of the King of kings. God knew what He was doing, even if bitter Mara did not.
Does that give you some perspective on your circumstances? Or are you just a reflection of current events?
