Ruth Reminders

When we listen daily for God’s whispers and follow His nudges, we are often rewarded in ways beyond our imagination.

I’ve recently been reading through the book of Ruth. It’s one of those books of the Bible that doesn’t come up that much. Seas don’t get parted. Manna doesn’t miraculously fall from Heaven. God doesn’t speak in a booming voice, but He’s there just the same and I suppose that’s why it appeals to me so much.

Ruth is a foreigner, a Moabite girl, who marries a Hebrew boy. He and his brother, mama and daddy are foreigners living in her land. They moved there to escape a famine. The daddy dies and within ten years both of the sons die too. The mama is left alone with her two daughters-in-law. She decides to go back home to Bethlehem, (yes that Bethlehem), and tells the two young women to return home to their fathers. One goes, but one, Ruth, refuses.

She speaks words to her grieving  mother-in-law which go on to become some of the most quoted in the Bible.

“But Ruth replied, Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.” Ruth 1:16

Her oath to a God she barely knew, would seal her fate.

There’s something called prevenient grace and it’s a term that means that God is pulling all sinners towards Him and providing for us before we even know who He is. That grace is always at work as it was with young Ruth.

Her husband was dead and she didn’t know the first thing about Bethlehem, yet she felt drawn to her mother-in-law and to her God.

Big miraculous moments always make the headlines as well they should. When God moves in huge ways that we can’t miss, we tend to take notice. But, the truth is, He most often moves in nudges and whispers. Ruth felt some kind of nudge to stay with Naomi. After arriving in Bethlehem, she felt the need to go and gather grain for food for them.

God led with a nudge and Ruth followed every time and in the end, He sent her a new husband, Boaz, and due to her obedient listening, our sweet Ruth, a widowed foreigner, got to be in the direct bloodline of Jesus. Ruth had a son named Obed. Obed had a son named Jesse and Jesse was the father of King David.

The seemingly helpless, hopeless and lost, put into God’s hands, can always be redeemed. Ruth reminds me that God is always at work and even when all we can do is take one tiny step at a time, when we walk with Him, He will always provide and quite often, in ways completely beyond our imagination.

Sometimes I need reminding. Perhaps you do too.

Have an awesome day!

Wendy 🙂