Are You Looking For A Love That Lasts?
Good Morning Friends,
Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that the entire world loves a lover and maybe he was right for the Bible is the best-selling book of all time. And it is filled with great love stories that instruct us. These stories are culturally relevant, memorable, provocative, applicable, beneficial and hopeful for the readers. People might not think that they are especially romantic but they really are in all sorts of ways. The pages are filled with lust, revenge, tenderness, courage, betrayal and humor. They instruct us in things physical as well as spiritual. One of them, the book of Ruth, is a short story and has no elaborate theology but has several elements of love. It is a folk tale of sorts that takes us away from the troubled days of Israel, during the time of the judges, to immerse us in the peace to be found in daily life. The setting is Bethlehem during the harvest. It starts out with devastation and ends with a match that looks like it was a bit of a scheme but it was of love from the start and therefor made in heaven. Are You Looking For A Love That Lasts?
Scripture: In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a certain man of Bethlehem in Judah went to live in the country of Moab, he and his wife and two sons. But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. When they had lived there about ten years, both Mahlon and Chilion also died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband. Then she started to return with her daughters-in-law from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the country of Moab that the Lord had considered his people and given them food. Then they wept aloud again. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. So she said, “See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.” But Ruth said, “Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; Where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. So Naomi returned together with Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, who came back with her from the country of Moab. They came to Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.
Ruth 1:1, 3-6, 14b-16, 22 (NRSV)
When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”
Matthew 22:34-40 (NRSV)
Message: People who make lasting commitments are the best lovers of all.
They are typically not naughty but do know that love can in some situations trump obedience. At the beginning of the Book of Ruth it is all about devastation and suffering and death. But what unfolds from there is not a curse at all but an amazing blessing. You see in it that God has a plan to use people for good. It does not matter if we are Israelite, or Moabite, or Northerners, or Southerners, or black, or brown, or blue. It does not matter if we have messed up in the past, or even if we try and take matters into our own hands. If we are faithful to God, then God will be faithful to us. It may not always be easy, and it may not always be pretty, but somehow God will work with us, because God is God and that is what God does. God loves. So when Naomi had lost all hope and felt as if there was nothing left to live for, she encourages her daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth, to leave and start over, but Ruth will not hear of it. As Orpah heads back to her remaining family, Ruth issues one of the most beautiful declarations of faithfulness in all of Scripture: “Where you go, I will go; Where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God”. What follows is the story of how Ruth is eventually matched with Boaz and becomes part of the linage of that leads to King David and to Jesus. Read the whole cleverly crafted book and be blessed.
Pray we have healthy loving relationships that honor and respects the power of God. Pray we are encouraged and equipped by the love stories in the Bible. Pray we not want more than what God has chosen for us. Pray we are blessed by a marriage with a partner that loves us into being part of a legacy. Pray we learn to experience the love of God helping us to overcome tragedy. Pray we be brought into greater unity knowing that we as Christians belong. Pray we have an attitude and disposition that makes a house a home. Pray we realize that in growing closer to Christ we can grow closer to each other. Pray we have Christ centered marriages.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 