In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab. The man’s name was Elimelech, his wife’s name Naomi. Ruth 1:1,2

After Israel entered the Promised Land, they settled into ease. A new generation was born, one that had never trudged the desert, never known hunger or battle. They lived in comfort—but they did not know the Lord. The miracles that carried their fathers through wilderness and war faded into distant memory. The landscape of faith grew barren. Israel plunged headlong into three hundred years of spiritual night.

It is here, in this backdrop of silence and famine, that Elimelech and Naomi’s story begins. Bethlehem—the house of bread—was emptied of bread. Hunger drove them into Moab, a land God had forbidden. They left searching for fullness, but found only sorrow. Tragedy met them in that foreign place, and their losses would become the dark soil out of which God would one day bring redemption.

God had led them into a hallway of transition. Behind them the door of familiarity closed; before them, another door flickered faintly with light, though the distance was shadowed and uncertain. They stood in the in-between—disoriented, fearful, stripped of control. For Naomi, it would be a season of bitterness, instability, and grief. Yet in that darkness, God was at work. What seemed like silence was preparation. What felt like loss was making room for joy.

I have walked that hallway, too. When the props I leaned on collapsed, when fear froze me in place, I had nowhere to turn but God. And in the dark, He spoke. He untangled lies I had believed, revealed the fault lines in my faith, and rewrote the hidden scripts of my heart. A hallway is not wasted wilderness. It is holy ground—if we let God meet us there. For Naomi it was. For me it was. And for anyone who dares to stay and not run, it still can be.

I needed the dark to see my need for You. Loving Father, Your ways, though they looked severe, were most kind. Amen