Ruth

            Given its location in the Scriptures, the book of Ruth shines like gem.  After all, after the horrors of Judges, this wholesome little story is like sunshine after a week of storms.  (Not incidentally, it has been raining here all week, and the sun is supposed to shine this afternoon and all day tomorrow!)

            Judges ends on the lowest of all notes:  there has been inter-tribal warfare, sexual sins in Gibeah that echo (loudly) the depravity of Sodom, idolatry, duplicity, and violence.  And that doesn’t account for the fact that a lot of the judges were a little . . . shady.  Ehud began in deceit, concealing his sword and striking the king of Moab in secret.  Barak hid behind Deborah’s skirt.  Samson—well, what are you going to say about a man dedicated to the Lord from before birth who loves all manner of pretty Philistine girls and has a temper to rival Al Capone?

            Now frankly, Ruth doesn’t start off so well, either.  The prime Israelite in the story is Naomi, but her faith has been so frayed and tried that she changes her name to “Bitterness,”  “Mara.”  It’s the foreign girl, who faithfully casts her lot with her former mother-in-law, who demonstrates the best things that God’s people are supposed to be.  “Where you go, I will go; your people will be my people; your God will be my God.”  If only the Lord’s own chosen people had had that same sense of dedication to Him and to one another!

            There is a faithful Israelite here, too.  That is Boaz, who shoulders the responsibility of his kinsman’s family.  (Ruth is less a love story than it is a story about accepting family responsibility.)  The point, I suppose, is that while the majority of the people are doing what is right in their eyes, the humble few—Boaz, Ruth, Naomi (when she comes to her senses)—are remaining faithful.

            Finally, there is the closing announcement that Ruth and Boaz are the ancestors of David.  David is not explained in Ruth, but the alert reader is supposed to know where the story is going, that David is the great king of Israel, the high point of their history.  While there is no king in the land, the Lord is working to rectify that condition by preparing the way for the one who has His own heart (1 Sam. 13:14).

            Light in the darkness, a faithful remnant in the land—that’s the way the Lord works.  He works that way a thousand years before Jesus, in the life and ministry of Jesus, and two thousand years after Jesus.