Skip to main content

Going Home

             When Naomi heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, she and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there. With her two daughters-in-law she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah. (Ruth 1:6-7)

             “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death!  I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’  So he got up and went to his father. (Luke 15:17-18)

            The book of Ruth is set in the time of the Judges when Israel would turn away from God, be subjected to foreigners, and return to God. Ruth’s story parallels that process. Her family moved away from God and were subject to foreigners, and in today’s passage, she returns to God. Another parallel is the parable of the prodigal son. I’m not suggesting that Ruth didn’t happen, just that individuals and groups can and do follow similar patterns. The nice thing about that is that we can learn from their experiences and apply what we learn when we find ourselves in the same pattern.

            Today’s passage says that Ruth heard that there was food in Israel. There are several possibilities here. It could be that the famine had lasted ten years and was just ending, that no one happened to report to Ruth that there was food in Israel earlier, or that until she lost her husband and sons, she was content to stay in Moab even if there was food in Israel. As with the prodigal son, it wasn’t until things got bad where she was that her thoughts turned to the possibility of things being better at home.

            The key here isn’t home in the physical sense. We can be just as stuck at home when God calls us to leave it. I remained at a church until God orchestrated events so that I had to leave. I have stayed in jobs where I was miserable because I was convinced nowhere else would be any better or that any better place would see that I’d worked in that previous place and want nothing to do with me. The “home” involved in Israel, Ruth, The Prodigal Son, and in our lives is, first and foremost, God, and the first step in the process is to recognize that things could be better and that we may not be as stuck as we think we are. In fact, our being stuck may be God’s way of telling us it’s time to move, and when we move, the direction we need to go is toward home, which is toward God.

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Way, The Truth, and The Life

              Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me . (John 14:6)           If “I am the gate of the sheep…I am the good shepherd” from chapter 10 is a double whammy, this verse is a triple whammy. And its first victim is the notion that any other so-called god was acceptable or the same as Jesus. He, and He alone is the way, the truth, and the life, and the only way to get to the Father. There is no other Savior, or Redeemer, according to Jesus. Now, to be fair, other religions will claim that their religion or god(s) are the only way. That is the nature of gods and of religions. If this and that are equally good and agree on what’s necessary, then this and that are the same thing, so there’s no need to from the other to one. If that’s the case, then why speak against the other or promote the one? There’s a song I’ve been listening to i...
Post a Comment
Read more