In the opening verses of the book of Ruth, Naomi experiences great tragedy and loss. She is a sufferer, who is struggling to hold on to any\u00a0hope. And, though she sees God’s hand in her tragedy, she\u00a0has concluded that God is against her and that she has returned\u00a0“empty” – even though Ruth returns with her in a\u00a0great display of devotion and faithfulness. Suffering can have the effect of impairing our vision\u00a0– just like Naomi, it can lead us to idealize\u00a0the\u00a0past and fail to see God’s blessings\u00a0in the present.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the opening verses of the book of Ruth, Naomi experiences great tragedy and loss. She is a sufferer, who is struggling to hold on to any\u00a0hope. And, though she sees God’s hand in her tragedy, she\u00a0has concluded that God is against her and that she has returned\u00a0“empty” – even though Ruth returns with her in a\u00a0great display of devotion and faithfulness. Suffering can have the effect of impairing our vision\u00a0– just like Naomi, it can lead us to idealize\u00a0the\u00a0past […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3167,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"ctc_sermon_topic":[],"ctc_sermon_book":[96],"ctc_sermon_series":[95],"ctc_sermon_speaker":[64],"ctc_sermon_tag":[],"class_list":["post-3172","ctc_sermon","type-ctc_sermon","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","ctc_sermon_book-ruth","ctc_sermon_series-faithful-god","ctc_sermon_speaker-jeff-cottone","ctfw-has-image"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redeemerchurchpca.com\/NewTheme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon\/3172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redeemerchurchpca.com\/NewTheme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redeemerchurchpca.com\/NewTheme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/ctc_sermon"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redeemerchurchpca.com\/NewTheme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redeemerchurchpca.com\/NewTheme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3172"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/redeemerchurchpca.com\/NewTheme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon\/3172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3772,"href":"https:\/\/redeemerchurchpca.com\/NewTheme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon\/3172\/revisions\/3772"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redeemerchurchpca.com\/NewTheme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redeemerchurchpca.com\/NewTheme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"ctc_sermon_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redeemerchurchpca.com\/NewTheme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon_topic?post=3172"},{"taxonomy":"ctc_sermon_book","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redeemerchurchpca.com\/NewTheme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon_book?post=3172"},{"taxonomy":"ctc_sermon_series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redeemerchurchpca.com\/NewTheme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon_series?post=3172"},{"taxonomy":"ctc_sermon_speaker","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redeemerchurchpca.com\/NewTheme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon_speaker?post=3172"},{"taxonomy":"ctc_sermon_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redeemerchurchpca.com\/NewTheme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctc_sermon_tag?post=3172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}