I have been using One Year Bible Online for my daily Bible study for almost a year. For today, One Year Bible Online links here. I started writing this blog because the only way I can get myself to read the Bible everyday is to pretend that I am teaching someone about what it says to me. I hope that by posting these ruminations others may get some benefit as well. If you have any thoughts or comments regarding these verses or what I have written about them, please post them. I hope that the Spirit is moving in others through these posts as the Spirit has definitely been convicting me.
After Naomi and Ruth arrived in Bethlehem, Ruth asked Naomi permission to gather grain behind the harvesters of anyone who would allow her to do so. Naomi granted her permission. By chance one day, Ruth was gathering behind Boaz’s harvesters. Boaz was a relative of Naomi’s dead husband. While she was there, Boaz came out to his field to monitor his harvesters. He asked his overseer who the young woman following his harvesters was. When he was told she was Ruth, Naomi’s daughter-in-law, he instructed his people to treat her with respect. He then approached Ruth and told her to stay with his workers and to feel free to drink from the water jars filled by his men for his workers. Ruth asked him why he was being so kind to her, to which Boaz replied that he had heard of all she had done for Naomi.
At mealtime during the harvest day, Boaz invited Ruth to eat with him (or possible just to share in the meal he provided to his harvesters). When she returned to gathering, Boaz instructed his men to allow her to gather among the sheaves and to intentionally leave some stalks behind for her. Ruth gleaned a rather large amount for someone collecting what the “official” harvesters missed. In addition to the grain she gathered, Ruth brought home to Naomi some of the food leftover from the meal Boaz had given her during the day. Naomi immediately wanted to know whose field she had worked that day. When Ruth told her that it was Boaz’s field, Naomi told her to continue in his fields because Boaz was one of those related to her dead husband with the responsibility to watch out for them (and the corresponding right to the ancestral fields which had passed to her husband). So Ruth stayed close to the women who worked the harvest for Boaz while living with Naomi.
When the harvest was finished, Naomi told Ruth to put on some perfume and her best outfit and go down to the threshing floor where Boaz would be threshing his grain. However, she should avoid letting him know she was there. At the end of the day when he had finished eating and drinking, Ruth was to not where he lay down. Once he fell asleep, Naomi told Ruth to uncover his feet and lay down. In the middle of the night, Boaz woke up and as startled to discover a woman lying at his feet. He immediately asked who she was. She told him who she was and asked that he take on the role of guardian-redeemer, offering herself to him. Boaz is flattered by her attention, but tells her that there is another more closely related to her father-in-law. Boaz tells her to stay the night and in the morning he will see if the other man wants to fulfill the role of guardian-redeemer. Boaz tells Ruth that if that other man does not wish to fulfill that role, than he, Boaz, will do so. In the morning Boaz had Ruth leave the threshing floor before anyone knew she was there and gave her a large amount of grain to take to Naomi.
When Ruth told Naomi the results of her night, Naomi assured Ruth that Boaz would resolve the issue before the end of the day. Boaz brought the city elders and the guardian-redeemer to the city gates. In front of the city elders, he told the guardian-redeemer that Naomi was going to sell fields which belonged to their relative, her dead husband, and suggested that the guardian-redeemer buy them. The guardian-redeemer said that he would until Boaz told him that in order to do so he would need to marry Ruth. The guardian-redeemer told Boaz that in that case, he could not do it and Boaz should do so. Boaz made sure that the city elders took notice that he had followed the correct forms. So Boaz took Ruth as his wife and after a short time she bore him a son named Obed.
After spending two days in the Samaritan town, Jesus continued to Galilee. As He traveled through Galilee, Jesus came to Cana. There a government official from Capernaum approached Him and requested that He come and heal his son, who was desperately ill. Jesus expressed what appears to be frustration at the constant requests for healing. The man responds to this apparent rebuke by begging Jesus to come before his child dies. Jesus told the man to go, his son would live.
The man took Jesus at His word and headed home. While he was still on the way, his servants came to him and told him that his son was better. The man asked them what time the recovery began. When they told him the time, he realized it was at exactly the time Jesus had told him his son would get better. As a result of this the man, and his entire household, believed in Jesus. Do we take God at His word and go? Or do we want Him to give us more substantial signs?
Today’s psalm recounts how God worked with the Israelite people to mold them into His people. Are we willing to allow God to mold us into His people? Even if it means going through the sorts of trials and tribulations that the Israelites did? The thought frightens me, but I am unwilling to accept the alternative.
How wonderful that these proverbs come up today while the revelation of something I’ve been working on is fresh in my mind. I have often said that we as Christians do not truly fear God enough. I have long felt that to be true, but there was always something missing in my explanation of what I was getting at, the idea was incomplete. Then this weekend we had the Light of Hope Ministries team lead a series of meetings at our congregation. At one point I brought up my thoughts about how we should have fear of God and in his response Steve Lapp mentioned fearing to disrespect the Lord. I am not sure to what degree what I heard was the thought he was expressing and to what degree it was God speaking solely to me and me hearing something beyond what Steve himself was saying. But what came to me was that when the Scripture talks about fearing the Lord, it is talking about being afraid to disrespect the Lord. We should be afraid, in a hide under the table kind of way, of doing anything that might be perceived as disrespectful by God.
Which brings us to today’s proverbs. The first tells us that those who fear the Lord will be secure. Those who are careful to honor the Lord in what they do, who are careful to never show disrespect to Him, will be secure in all of their ways. The second tells us that fear of being disrespectful towards God, leads us to behave in a manner that is like a fountain of life, both for ourselves and for others.