Thank you to Mark for this week’s MWB
Read: Ruth…it’s only 4 chapters!
We are looking at 3 women in the Old Testament and what they teach us about the life of faith: Hagar, Rebekah, and today, Ruth.
The little book of Ruth is basically a love story. It has one particular word running through it, the word ‘kindness’ in the face of adversity.
It begins with a family in Israel, struggling to find food because of famine in the land. They go to the neighbouring country of Moab, and here they are struck by tragedy. Naomi’s husband dies, and 10 years later, both her sons die.
Naomi sets out to go back to Israel, and arrives there with her daughter-in-law Ruth, who has faithfully clung to her mother-in-law, telling her: “Your people will be my people, and your God, my God”
Naomi and Ruth are about to experience the kindness of God as they arrive in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.
The story moves on to the romance between Ruth and Boaz, the man who will become her ‘kinsman redeemer’, a man who had to be a close relative, and was willing to pay the redemption price to secure his bride.
Boaz was the perfect kinsman redeemer in that he was wealthy, kind, and godly.
Boaz and Ruth eventually marry, and have a son, who will become the grandfather to David, whose line then leads us to Jesus.
We are all drawn to kindness and love. The story of Ruth is not just a story of human kindness, but looks at the bigger picture of God’s kindness and love to us all, culminating in the arrival of a Son from Boaz and Ruth’s line.
It all happens with the birth of Jesus in a stable in Bethlehem, and is completed at the cross as Jesus pays the ultimate price of our redemption from sin by laying His life down for us…
As Paul says in Romans 8: 31,32:
“What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”
Amen!