Unshaken Read Free

began to wonder. Had God ever heard her prayers? Had the Lord ever listened to her pleas?
    Like the approach of locusts ready to feast upon her faith, the silence hummed inside her head. She pressed her hands over her ears and clenched her teeth. Why was the night like this? Sometimes the darkness was so still she could hear her own blood rushing through her veins. The sound was like a heavy rain washing open the doors of her mind, flooding her with memories she wanted to forget.
    The room echoed with her dead husband’s voice. “We’re going to Moab whether you like it or not, Naomi! There’s no famine there.”
    “But, Elimelech, we mustn’t leave Bethlehem! It’s our home.”
    “Our home is turning to dust!”
    “If we trust and obey God, He will provide.”
    “Are you blind? Look around you, woman. God has abandoned us!”
    “Because you and others bow down to baals!”
    “I bow down to Baal because he’s the lord of this land!”
    “Moses told our fathers the Lord is God and there is no other!”
    “And what good has God done for us lately?” Elimelech argued. “How long since rain last fell on our land? When was the last time our crops produced even a little more than what we need to fill our own stomachs?”
    “But you are saying it yourself, my husband. The Lord has provided what we need to survive.”
    “I’m sick of hearing you say that! I’m the one taking care of us, Naomi. I’m the one working my flesh to the bones on this rocky ground and watching my crops die! Don’t tell me God is taking care of us! Look at my hands! Look at the calluses and tell me it’s God who takes care of you and our sons. God stands far off and watches while everything I own turns to dust. He’s abandoned us! You’re just a woman. What do you understand of these things? I’ll do what’s right in my own eyes.”
    That same day, Elimelech had mortgaged the land he’d inherited from his father. He’d come home, packed their possessions on two donkeys, and taken Naomi and their sons, Mahlon and Kilion, away from Bethlehem. She’d barely had time to bid good-bye to her friends and few remaining family members. Elimelech had been so certain he was making the right decision! What man wanted to hear the constant dripping of a nagging wife? So she did what she felt she could do: she kept silent with her doubts and she prayed.
    She prayed in the morning when she first awakened. She prayed throughout the day as she worked. And she prayed when she lay down upon her pallet at night. She prayed and prayed and prayed—and watched her life turn to ashes.
    Elimelech found work in Moab at Kir-hareseth. He cut off his locks of hair, shaved off his beard, and donned Moabite clothing to make his way easier. There were other Israelites sojourning in Moab and living in Kir-hareseth. They, too, had come to wait out the famine in the Promised Land, and they, too, quickly embraced the ways of the people around them and forgot the Law of Moses and the promises of God.
    It was summer when Elimelech died.
    “I just need to rest.” He’d come home complaining of pain in his chest. “I’ll be fine in the morning.” He’d sat right where she was sitting now, rubbing his arm, up and down, up and down, grimacing. “Naomi?” The strange catch in his throat had brought her to her knees before him.
    “What, my love?” She took his hand and covered it with her own, wanting to comfort him.
    “Naomi,” he said again, the sweat beading on his forehead. He’d looked terrified. “I only did what I thought was right.” His lips were blue. She’d wanted to comfort him. She’d held him in her arms and tried to soothe him. But nothing had helped ease his torment.
    Even now, after fifteen years, the grief rose up in her again, renewed by Mahlon’s untimely death, just as her grief had been renewed and deepened last year when Kilion died. There was no escaping the pain, no hiding from it, no pushing it down deep inside her anymore. She