Ruth 3′

1. One day Naomi her mother-in-law said to her, “My daughter, should I not try to find a home (find rest) for you, where you will be well provided for?

2. Is not Boaz, with whose servant girls you have been, a kinsman of ours? Tonight he will be winnowing barley on the threshing-floor.

3. Wash and perfume yourself, and put on your best clothes. Then go down to the threshing-floor, but don’t let him know that you are there until he has finished eating and drinking.

4. When he lies down note the place where he is lying. Then go and cover his feet and lie down. He will tell you what to do.”

Ruth has been the burden on the heart of Naomi – she’s been concerned what to do to make her a happily settled or married woman. Most women of marriageable age want to settle down with their rightful husbands. There’s a thing in the psyche of each male and female that wants a companion, another person other than a family member, to whom to radiate love and from whom one wants to experience the pull of love.

Love is like God, nay, “God is love,” an indefinable pulling force towards another, an infinite mammoth around which no man or woman can wrap his or her arms. Scientists are at a loss in its presence and philosophers easily become poets in the presence of its awesomeness!

The Hebrew word translated home in our text is in the margin of my bible rendered find rest. Evidently, home is rest and rest is home. The Holy Spirit who’s the architect of the future is well involved in this matter, especially concerning those that had and have been so predestined in the unfolding progress of salvation. Perhaps, Naomi was just planning on her own to give the desired rest to a daughter who was in great love with her. But then, even our thoughts may prove to be pieces of clay in the hand of the Master Potter.

“It still remains,” says the 6th verse of Hebrews, 4, “that some will enter that rest…” Then it urges in the 11th verse, “Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest…” The kinsman-redeemer, Jesus Christ understands and will accept our love overtures. Funny enough, “It is God who works in you to will and act according to his good purpose” (Philippians 2:13). There is oozing love from the willing bride and there’s boiling love from the bridegroom – all stirred in the hot cauldron.

Naomi teaches her obedient student what to do – come simply without any borrowed or false adornment. Those gestures taught to Ruth are coded messages of love overtures to the man, Boaz. The game plays out as envisaged in Naomi’s vision. But before now, Boaz has had no thought of marriage with Ruth. His heart is pure before the Lord. Even now when the woman has expressed her love to him, he’s not quick to jump at the offer; he’s aware that there’s a closer kinsman to Ruth than him. Can a man be more self-effacing and considerate! It means that all his generous acts are prompted, not by scheming to take advantage, but by his selflessness and desire to be of help to the dead relations. We are in a troubled time when the teachers and shepherds will, unlike Naomi, rather make the flock focus on him instead of the Kinsman-redeemer.

The husband of the Church wasn’t a dangerous schemer to take advantage of troubled and lost mankind. As a matter of fact, When we were yet helpless under the law of sin and death, Christ came down for our rescue. This is my personal paraphrase of “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

Thank You Lord for making me both to will and to want to do of Your good pleasure

Thank you Lord for being my Kinsman-redeemer, offering Yourself as the centre of the radiance of Your love. When I was yet in need of rest, a home, You redeemed me to Yourself.

Thank You, Lord