THE BOOK OF RUTH
God promised that Abraham’s descendants would bless the rest of the world, but they didn’t always cooperate. God, however, is not easily dissuaded from His plans and frequently comes up with the most inventive ways of continuing to push the story forward, even when things seem to have stopped completely.
The Judges of Israel were used in powerful ways, but they were often terrible people with a total lack of impulse control. They were arrogant and violent and stubborn and rebellious. And the people followed their leaders well.
In the end, the Israelites looked an awful lot like their Canaanite neighbours.
What was God to do? This people He meant to make into a special nation insisted on being like the motley crowd around them. So God went and found someone else.
Her name was Ruth, and she was a Moabite. She married a Jewish man who had moved to Moab with his parents and brother because of a famine in their homeland. But then tragedy struck, all the men in the family died, leaving three widows behind. Ruth, her Moabite sister-in-law, Orpah, and her Jewish mother-in-law, Naomi.
These two Moabite women had never encountered the, uh, special blessing that is a Jewish widow. “I’m going to change my name to ‘Bitter,’ because that’s exactly how I feel. God has been bitter to me; I’m going to be bitter to everyone else.”
For some reason, Ruth decided to stick it out with this woman. Orpah chose to stay behind while Ruth took Naomi (a.k.a., “Bitter Woman”) back to Israel. What a fun trip that must have been!
Now, in those days, wealthy landowners often left portions of their fields unharvested so that widows and other needy people could pick the grain and have some food without having to beg. It was while Ruth was availing herself of this local custom that she caught the eye of a man named Boaz (who also happened to be a relative of Naomi’s).
Boaz liked what he saw and asked his workers to be a little extra sloppy when picking the fields so that Ruth wouldn’t have to work too hard to find food. Naomi told Ruth, “I think he’s warm for your form” (that’s a paraphrase you won’t even read in THE MESSAGE). Ruth made a forward pass that Boaz caught, and they all lived happily ever after.
Oh, and it turns out that bitter turns sweet awfully fast when there’s a grandchild involved!
Dear Lord, nothing can defeat Your gracious and redemptive purposes. In spite of the frequently profound rebellion of Your people, You continue to unfold Your Story in creative and unexpected ways. You often display the riches of Your grace in ways that we do not understand, and You can use adversity and turn it to good. You can turn our bitterness into joy and our despair into praise when we hold fast to You in times when we are too near-sighted to see the good that You see. I can’t control a single day, and I don’t know what lies around the next corner of my life. But You do, and You always intend my ultimate good. I ask that by Your grace I would release all bitterness and resentment and embrace a clear and robust hope in You, even though I do not know where my journey is leading me.
In Jesus’s name, Amen
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