West Bowles Community Church

Before you can stay beside someone who’s disappearing, you have to understand what’s happening to them.

Grief has a way of renaming us.

It takes a person who used to be pleasant and rewrites them as bitter. Out loud. In front of everyone. And if you don’t understand that renaming from the inside, you’ll try to correct it instead of standing next to it.

Sunday, we looked at what it costs to stand beside it. Tomorrow’s ‘Look Again’ digs into how that renaming works.

There’s a pattern to the way we create distance.

Once you see it, you know how to stay next to the people you love.

Naomi uses all four of these to try to convince Ruth away in Ruth chapter 1. Deflection. Reasoning. Social proof. God-talk. Every one of them sounds noble. That’s what makes them so hard to spot.

But what appear to be exit ramps may very well be statements of hope you’ll stay.