Gratefulness & Faithfulness!

 Gratefulness

    In my yearly scripture reading schedule this week my eyes beheld the beauty of the narrative of a woman named Ruth! A clear example of loyalty, devotion, integrity, and character. If you're unfamiliar, let me bring you up to speed. 

    Ruth married into a family that had come to her nation as sojourners, similar to immigrants with work visa's. She married into an Israelite family who had made their way to her land because of a great famine in Israel. This family were Ephrathites of Bethlehem in Judah. The patriarch was named Elimelech, and he brought with him his wife Naomi, as well as his two sons, Mahlon and Chilion. While sojourning in that land both sons married women of that land, Mahlon had taken Ruth and Chilion had taken Orpah as their wives. In time Elimelech, Mahlon, and Chilion had all died and left Naomi and her daughters-in-law as widows.

    One thing we may miss is the reality that the Moabite's are a cursed people! Back in Deuteronomy 23 God forbids any Ammonite or Moabite from entering the assembly of the Lord because they did not show grace unto Israel on their way out of Egypt and even hired Baalim to curse them on their way! But God saves from the uttermost and to the uttermost!

    Now devastated from the loss of her husband and sons Naomi hears that her kinsman in Israel have overcome the famine so she decides that her place is back in her own land with her people. She bids her daughter's-in-law goodbye and sends them back to their respective lands and people. Orpah receives her request and goes back to her family but Ruth rejects such a request! Her gratefulness unto Naomi and her deceased husband works itself out in her loyalty to Naomi!

Faithfulness

    Ruth's reply to Naomi is this, “Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. Thus may the Lord do to me, and worse, if anything but death parts you and me.” Her gratefulness pours out in this confession of loyalty and faithfulness! In this statement she denounces who she was and what she was a part of and commits to a new identity! It's a picture of our own salvation moment! When we realized who we were and who God is all we can be is grateful that we're not crushed by Him and thrown into Hell! Under the bright light of that grace we renounce all of who we was and what we were a part of and commit to a new identity, a new way of life, a new existence if you will! Ruth was no longer a Moabite, no longer under that banner of cursedness, no longer an enemy of the God of Israel but an Israelite herself!

The Fruit 

    Naomi takes Ruth on this journey to Bethlehem and upon their arrival it is the barley harvest season. Ruth makes her way unto the field of a kinsman of her deceased husband to glean the edges of his fields that her and her mother-in-law Naomi may have sustenance! Following Naomi's advice Ruth becomes loyal to Boaz, her husband's kinsman. In the end Boaz becomes what is called in that society, her redeemer. A redeemer in the Jewish culture was one who took a deceased kinsman wife and assumed her as his own responsibility, redeeming her, and propagating the namesake of the deceased. She is now the wife of Boaz, a man of riches and integrity. 

    Ruth's life of hardship and loss has turned around to be far greater than what she could have ever imagined, and it's all rooted in her gratefulness that led to faithfulness! God turns curses in to blessings! The greatest image of redemption in Ruth's life is not recorded in the book of the Old Testament that bears her name but in the Gospel's of the New Testament! Just as Rahab, Ruth was of a cursed people under the wrath and judgment of God, but God turned it around with a redeemer! Sounds familiar doesn't it? It sounds like the Gospel! In the pages of the Gospel account in the New Testament we find this Moabite woman who had lost all that she had in the lineage unto the true redeemer, the Messiah, Jesus the Christ!

Corem Deo

    So often we are so close to our problem that we can't see how God is going to turn it around for our good! No matter how often we hear or tell ourselves that biblical truth that God is working all things together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose, but when we're in the thick of the battle we can't see it working! In those moments we must trust what we know, not what we see! Walk by faith not by sight. Just because we've lost it all today doesn't mean that God isn't going to give it all back and more! Pressed down and running over!