Orpah said, "See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya, I'm going back home to Moab 'cause I understand it". Because you don't want to deal with the migration and the discomfort of having to retool yourself, you'll go back into something that's lesser than what you have an opportunity to go in. Her other daughter-in-law turned around and went back, she got to the border and went back like so many people do, they come to the border of better, they come to the border of better and go back because better feels funny because you don't really think that you're worthy of better. She is tortured by the bad memories, she's tortured by the emptiness, she tortured by the regret. I don't have another smile, I don't have another word of wisdom, I don't have another prophecy, I don't have an answer, I don't feel like encouraging you, all my courage is gone.
You're empty when you go to bed, you're empty when you get up that morning, you are just empty. Empty is when people take you for granted and they keep asking you for more and more and more and more, and finally you are so depleted that you are empty. Tired can be resolved easily but there's a difference between being tired and being empty, this girl is empty, and she doesn't have the patience to deal with the empty, empty.Įmpty is when you have given out all that you can give and you don't have anything left for yourself, empty is when everybody is taking from you and nobody's giving back to you, and you wonder when is it gonna be my turn to receive anything at all. If I'm tired I can take a nap, if I'm tired I can get some rest, if I'm really tired I can go on vacation. Now don't confuse empty with tired, empty and tired are two different things. Worse becomes a culture, worse becomes indelibly imprinted in your soul where you, she says I went out full, I had everything when I started and I came back empty. She's in a terrible place because she has gone through hell and high water and she needs to believe that things are gonna get better but the reality is, it's hard to believe for better when you've had 10 years of worse. She is at a bad place in her life, has anybody ever been at a bad place in your life? She's in a terrible place, she's in a terrible place. And she gets ready to go home and she gets ready to go through the transition again, back into an environment after 10 years of living in Moab. And she and her husband and her two sons have lived in Moab for 10 years, but over 10 years, how many of you know a lot can happen in 10 years? You would be shocked what can happen in life in 10 years, that's why you ought not look down your nose at anybody, because the person you're talking about, you may have to face what they're going through in the next 10 years.Īnd now this woman has, over the course of 10 years she's lost her son and she lost her other son and left two widows as daughter in laws, she lost her own husband and she decides I'm going home. This is Naomi, who comes from a wealthy family in Bethlehem, has left Bethlehem because of a famine and a drought that was so persistent that she moved to Moab, and has now lived in Moab 10 years.
This is Naomi, let me explain to you who this is.
So immigration even at its best is difficult, and in our text today, this is not immigration at its best, this is immigration at it's worst. Anytime there's change, there is immigration, and anytime there's immigration there will be discomfort. So when you think about immigration I don't want you to just think about it within the context of what we are seeing played out, but I want you to understand that immigration is when you are used to being one place and you migrate to another place, and you are in another place but you are foreign to the place. "Immigration is an international movement of people into a destination country of which they are not native or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle or reside there, especially as permanent residence or naturalized citizens or to take up employment as a migrant worker or temporary as a foreign entity", somebody say amen. The definition, let me give you the definition, you can put it on the board. Yeah, we all go through it, we all go through it, even if you stay in this country the rest of your life and you're a citizen of this country, the concept of immigration is something that you're going to face all of your life. When we started talking today, I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about the importance of understanding and realizing that immigration, no matter what we are seeing played out at the border and people stuck at the border and all the chaos is going on, that whether you realize it or not, immigration is something that we all go through.