“The Lord repay you for what you have done, and a full reward be given you by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.” – Ruth 2:12 (ESV)
Ruth had nothing to recommend her except loyalty.
She was a Moabite, a foreigner, a widow, following her bereaved mother-in-law Naomi back to a country she had never lived in, to a people who were not her people, to a God who was not the God she had grown up with. She had watched her husband die and then declined the reasonable offer to return to her own family and her own future. She said to Naomi: where you go I will go, where you die I will die, and the God of Israel will be my God. She arrived in Bethlehem with nothing but the commitment that loyalty cost her.
She asked Naomi if she could go and glean in the fields, the provision the Mosaic law made for the poor: the right to gather what was left behind after the harvesters had passed through. She ended up, by what the text calls coincidence but the reader recognises as Providence, in the field of Boaz, a man of wealth and standing who was a relative of Naomi’s deceased husband. When Boaz saw her, he asked whose young woman she was, and his servants told him: she is the Moabite who came back from Moab with Naomi. He had already heard about her. He told her to stay in his fields, to drink from the water his workers had drawn, and to eat at his table. And he instructed his workers to leave extra grain deliberately for her to find.
Everything that follows in the book of Ruth is the working out of the faithfulness that Boaz showed to a foreigner who had earned nothing except by the quality of her character and the genuineness of her commitment. By the end of the story, Ruth has a husband, a home, a son named Obed, and a place in the genealogy of David and, through David, of Jesus. The woman who arrived in Bethlehem with nothing but loyalty is the great-grandmother of the greatest king in Israel’s history.
Think about the person who has left everything to follow faithfulness and arrived with nothing to show for it except the quality of their character. The one who has been loyal when disloyalty would have been easier and more advantageous. The person who has served faithfully in a place that seemed to offer no return. God’s faithfulness to the loyal is generational, not merely personal. What He did through Ruth’s loyalty was not merely a personal blessing. It was a genealogical repositioning that placed her at the centre of the most important family line in human history.
Today, if you are in your gleaning season, showing up every day in someone else’s field with nothing to offer except your loyal, faithful presence, know that Boaz has already noticed. He has already given instructions to leave extra grain. The kinsman-redeemer is closer than you think.
Be faithful where you are. The genealogy is being written.
Prayer
Father, I come into your field today as Ruth came into Boaz’s, with nothing to offer except my presence and my faithfulness. I trust that you, my kinsman-redeemer, have already seen me and already given instructions. Restore what was lost. Place me in the genealogy you are writing. Let my loyalty be the foundation of a faithfulness that outlasts my own lifetime. In Jesus’ name, amen.
