The Love Story #2 — Is God Really My King? | Moheb Mina
Section Two
”Is God Really My King?”
Elimelech, Naomi, and their two sons walked a long distance.
It took them almost eight and a half days of walking.
Naomi had lost some of her radiance. The hardship had already taken its toll. But worse was still coming, and she did not know it yet.
In her gentle spirit, she kept asking her husband, “Are you sure we are doing the right thing? Everyone else is in Bethlehem — why are we leaving? God might still come through.”
Elimelech, in his uncertainty, fear, and anxiety, told her, “My gracious wife, I am not sure if we are making the right or wrong decision. You know Yahweh is silent.”
Yet Naomi gently pushed back, “Elimelech, you know we should not be living in the land of Moab.”
“Yes, I know, I know — but we would die of hunger if we stayed in Bethlehem,” he replied.
Naomi’s heart fainted inside of her.
She began to think of herself as an immigrant, a stranger in a foreign land.
How would she communicate? Where would they worship? What were the customs out there?
How would people treat her and her family? She did not know anybody there. Would people be kind or cruel? Would anyone welcome them into their homes? Where would they stay? Who would be their neighbours?
At the end of all her endless thoughts, she lifted her eyes to the sky and asked Yahweh to be with her and her family.
A few metres ahead of her walked her two sons, Mahlon and Chilion.
They were talking with each other, expressing their fears about the transition ahead. They dreamed of the days they had played in the fields with their old friends back in Bethlehem — the day they first learned to swim in the small canal at the edge of the village, the mornings they rode their donkey to help their father in the field while their dog trotted faithfully at their feet.
They lamented those days with heavy hearts, fearful of the unknown land ahead.
They even thought about their future wives — who they would one day marry. They knew they should not marry women from the land they were entering. But for how long would they be away? They did not know when they would ever return home.
While they were still talking, Elimelech raised his voice.
“I can see Moab.”
It was at dusk — the hour between dog and wolf.
Hardly had Naomi seen the village from afar when her heart sank deeply.
Moab.
She remembered all the stories her mother had told her as they worked together around the house. Her mother had spoken of the origin of Moab — how they were originally connected through Lot, Abraham’s nephew.
She told her about their worship, how they had refused to help Israel when they came out of Egypt, and how deeply the two peoples had learned not to trust each other. She had always warned Naomi about the Moabites and told her of the battles fought between Israel and Moab across the generations.
Naomi, standing and staring at the distant gates, drifted into one of those stories — the dark season when God handed His people over to the Moabites, who humiliated Israel for eighteen years.
It was one of the darkest times the nation had ever known.
Until the people cried out to the Lord, and He heard them, and raised up Ehud to deliver them from the hand of Moab.
What terrified Naomi most was not the journey behind her.
It was what lay ahead — that she was now going to live among the Moabites.
Naomi had heard frightening stories about the gods of Moab ever since childhood.
Stories whispered carefully among the women of Bethlehem while bread was kneaded and lamps were lit at dusk.
Stories of fire, sacrifice, and worship tangled with lust and ritual. Stories of people who no longer trembled before Yahweh.
And now her sons would grow among them.
These things filled Naomi’s heart with great dread.
What are we doing here? she asked herself. How are we going to build a family in this ungodly and frightening place?
Naomi spoke softly, though sorrow weighed heavily upon her voice.
“Elimelech, my heart feels so heavy.”
When Elimelech heard his name, he dove deep into his own thoughts.
My God is King.
Is God really my king?
He asked himself.
But as he stared toward the distant gates of Moab, the words no longer felt certain in his soul.
Was God truly leading them? Or had desperation begun to lead him instead?
For many nights he had prayed, yet heaven remained silent.
Fear crept deeper into his heart as another story rose in his memory — the story of Lot, Abraham’s nephew, who once journeyed toward a land rich in promise but empty of the fear of God.
A people whose ways had grieved the heart of Yahweh deeply.
Elimelech remembered how their wickedness had brought the judgment of God and destruction by fire.
Elimelech did not know if his own decision was any different.
He had lost his certainty — that quiet inner sense that tells a man when he is walking in the right direction and when he has wandered from it.
For a brief moment, doubt overwhelmed him.
Had he made a terrible mistake?
He could no longer tell which one this was.
But even as the question formed inside him, he lifted his eyes — and there were the gates of Moab, standing before them in the fading light.
“It is too late now,” he whispered to himself.
And he buried his fears beneath silence and kept walking.
Finally, after eight and a half days of walking — after a thousand fears and a thousand prayers, after arguments whispered in the dark and tears swallowed before the children could see them —
They reached the gates of Moab.
And the gates did not know who had just arrived.
The Love Story: In the Dark Despair — He Is Sovereign Behind the Scene