"Where you go, I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God." Ruth 1:16
If you’re like me, you have seen the genealogy sections in the Bible throughout your life and mentally skipped over them. You see that “so and so” was the father of “so and so” and it goes on and on about the family genealogy and your brain just kind of shuts off. It doesn’t feel relevant or important to you at the time. I had an experience the other day where this all changed for me. I decided to read through the New Testament again, from start to finish. As I started with the first chapter in Matthew, and noticed it was a description of the genealogy of Jesus, I almost decided to skip through as I typically do. However, this time was different for some reason. I decided to read through it and see if I would notice certain people that were related to Jesus that I may not have known before. This may be old news to some of you, but for anyone that has never realized this before, I thought I’d share what I found.
Verse 5 tells us that Boaz was related to Jesus. The book of Ruth tells us about the story of
Ruth and Naomi. Long story short, for
those that are unfamiliar, Ruth was the daughter-in-law of Naomi. Both of their
husbands died, and Naomi decided to return to her homeland, Bethlehem. Despite urging Ruth to return to her own
family, Ruth sacrificially moved with Naomi to take care of her. Once they were in Bethlehem, Ruth would work
in the fields and would provide for them both, as Naomi was an older woman and
could not do that for herself. Ruth
ultimately met the man in charge of the operation, Boaz. Boaz ended up liking
Ruth, helping her by assigning her to easier/less physically demanding work
than gleaning from the fields, and they ultimately fell in love and got married.
This was essentially a blessing from God
because of Ruth’s faithfulness and loyalty to Naomi.
Of course, the story of Ruth is a great one. We read it and glean so much from it (no pun
intended!), but, until we read Matthew chapter 1, we might not fully grasp the
importance of Ruth to the overall history of Jesus and ultimately our
salvation. This story shows how important
the characteristics of faithfulness and loyalty are to God. If Ruth had not been obedient and taken care
of Naomi, she would not have met Boaz, which would have altered the genealogy of
Jesus! Our decisions are important.
Every decision we make has an impact. How loyal are you to your friends? Are you
truly there for them when they need you? Are your conversations all about
yourself or do you ask them about their lives, too? Would you drop everything to be by her side
when she needs you?
Let’s decide to be loyal and faithful to our friends, if we’re
not that way already. You may never know
the power and impact this could have on your life and on theirs.
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