Ruth.
Friday, March 9 - Day 23 of Lent
Today, I tried the open-a-random-page-of-the-bible-and-point approach, and opened to the book of Ruth. The book is quite different from what I have been studying so far, in that it is an actual story told in chronological order. It’s a bit harder to write about, as I have to try and analyse the meaning and messages of the story, and I don’t want to be.... wrong. Hahahaha. That sounds ridiculous. But perhaps you know what I mean.
I will assume, for the sake of not re-telling the story, that you have read it. And if you haven’t, perhaps this is a good excuse to pick up the good book and have a read yourself!
The most prominent message that I got from Ruth is that even if your husband passes away before you bare a child, and even if you have nothing, and even if your mother-in-law (Naomi) asks you to walk away, and everything just seems to be going terribly, God still has a plan for you. Through Ruth’s awesome humility and righteousness, God steered her in the right direction in order to lead her to the man who would wed her, resulting in her baring the child, Obed, who would end up grandfathering David! Although life seemed to be going pretty sour for Ruth at a point, everything was STILL in God’s plan. That’s pretty cool, right? It just instills in me awesome hope, courage and faith in the Lord’s plan for me. Which is why these books are here, I guess!
Another indisputable message in the book of Ruth, is that God is concerned for all people, regardless of race, nationality, status or gender. I mean, Ruth was a Moabite, not a Jew, and even though many discriminated against her, God showed her love and eventually bestowed onto her immense wealth and happiness. There is no such thing as an unimportant person in the eyes of God.
From a bit of digging, I discovered that Moab, Ruth’s origin town, was a nation that originated from an incestuous encounter between Lot and one of his daughters. The country did not have a good name. Furthermore, Ruth was a poor widow who lived in a foreign land away from her birth family. There was every reason for people to look down on her. But God still saw her as important enough to include her as a part of one of the most important lineages in the Bible! It’s pretty cool that God’s plan typically involved using people who were considered to be ‘underdogs’, from man’s perspective. In our weakness, His strength is perfected.
Ruth wasn’t even a Jew, but she was good. She was completely selfless, as demonstrated in her wonderful vow to her mother-in-law, “where you go, I will go). Ruth 1: 16-17. She had such character, and knew in her heart what was right.
At the end of the day, we have to be humble and good. We have to listen to our hearts and our minds and follow what we know to be right. Taking it a step further, as Christians, we have to take all of the lessons that we have learnt from the Bible and through Jesus’ word, to become Christlike. That is all that is required for God to use us for His plan, in the same way He used Ruth.