verseoftheday

Naomi said to them, "Each of you go back to your mother's home. May the Lord show kindness to you as you have shown to the dead and to me. May the Lord grant each of you rest in the house of a new husband." She kissed them, and they wept loudly.  Ruth 1:8-10 CSB Not so easy being women on their own in a culture set up around family and wealth, especially land, being retained in the male line of the family. Their tears speak of their loss. Their tears speak of their relationship with one another. Their tears speak of difficult decisions.  It's OK to have tears.  It's OK to have tears that we cry with others.  The place that these three are in is a tough place. Limited resources. Limited options. Naomi wanted the best for Orpah and Ruth and could only see one way forward. There are days, times when our losses are big, our resources seem limited, options are few, the world seems against us, and it's OK to cry.  Naomi, Orpah and Ruth give us a model and permissi...

She and her daughters-in-law set out to return from the territory of Moab, because she had heard in Moab that the Lord had paid attention to his people's need by providing them food. She left the place where she had been living, accompanied by her two daughters-in-law, and traveled along the road leading back to the land of Judah. Ruth 1:6-7 CSB When Abraham for example was on the move there was an extended family and staff and livestock. A picture of prosperity. In this story there is no mention of any of that.  Ten years+ after the family moved hoping for a better future, there's now Naomi, Orpah, and Ruth walking back.  For Naomi it's going back to her place, her people. What will be going on for her?  A sense of failure? Loss? Lost mana? Hopeful that people she knew will welcome her back? What about Orpah and Ruth? What grief are they carrying? We don't know how their husbands died, husband's from a different religion and ethnic group. How would they be welcome ...

If I speak human or angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 1 Corinthians 13:1 CSB We were blessed to be at a wedding celebration yesterday and those wonderful verses about love a little further on in this chapter were shared. This first part though sets the scene: Don't be fooled by eloquent words. We can hear all the right words delivered in the most powerful way, if we're in church today we might hear the most engaging music, the best songs, but if there's no love, no real love, then it's just a sound that jars, a sound that's off, out of place. It's fake.  Paul here seems to be looking inward too.  If I speak without love, I'm just a jarring noise. We don't have to have the best words to love one another, just be open to see the person in front of us as an image bearer of our God, to see them in their humanity, their capacity, their worth, knowing that the image of God in me is not perfect, the humanity and capac...

They entered the fields of Moab and settled there. Naomi's husband, Elimelech, died, and she was left with her two sons. Her sons took Moabite women as their wives: one was named Orpah and the second was named Ruth. After they lived in Moab about ten years, both Mahlon and Chilion also died, and the woman was left without her two children and without her husband. Ruth 1:2-5 CSB This is a story that is soaked in grief and loss.  It's easy to skip forward to the redemptive part and gloss over this, but the writer of this book asks us to sit with this.  They've lost their home, their people, and now Naomi has lost her husband and her children.  This is a story couched in loss and grief.  I wonder what I would be telling myself if this was me..."we should've stayed, should never have come here." "My life is a disaster." "Why does God hate me?" "What have I done to deserve this?" "We tried to fit in. The boys got married and every...

Friday! Proverbs! My son, fear the Lord and the king;  Do not associate with those given to change; For their calamity will rise suddenly, And who knows the ruin those two can bring? Proverbs 24:21-22 NKJV Interesting! Interesting how the writer gives us the picture of God acting without warning, just like a king. So keep your distance becuase you don't want to get caught up with that! Who is it that we have to be careful not to get connected with? Change makers? What's wrong with them? Someone who is a subject of a king decides to change things, to make their own rules. Some versions of the Bible just put rebels or the rebellious in there.  The picture here is that the king finds out about the person trying to make their own kingdom, and comes over and sorts them out. My heart keeps wanting to make the rules, decide what's truth and error, when I'm all about my kingdom come, my will be done, there's a danger there.  Jesus was all about the Father's will being d...

The man's name was Elimelech, and his wife's name was Naomi. The names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They entered the fields of Moab and settled there. Ruth 1:2 CSB Ephrathites.  From Bethlehem. The writer wants us to know something of their whakapapa.  The place, the land that they come from, and the people who they belong to.  Genesis 35 includes the account of Jacob and his whanau in this area when Rachel dies and is buried there. That chapter includes the generations that would follow.  At the very end of Ruth is the whakapapa of David, the line of Jesus, and we can see the connection of these people, Elimilech, Naomi, Mahlon & Chilion, and how their story is intertwined with God's Big Story, his redemptive plan. Our God works in and through the most unlikely of people and circumstances, in this case a family without the resources to weather a famine, on the move in tough circumstances.  Maybe tha...

During the time of the judges, there was a famine in the land. A man left Bethlehem in Judah with his wife and two sons to stay in the territory of Moab for a while. The man's name was Elimelech, and his wife's name was Naomi. The names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. Ruth 1:1-2 CSB The book of Ruth opens with a family of refugees.  Economic refugees leaving a place of poverty seeking a better life.  The author doesn't give us the luxury of not knowing their names. They're not a group of unnamed people in the back of a truck or in a small boat on the Mediterranean, or a family desperately trying to get into a land far away that they've heard flows with water and sheep and kind people. They are Elimilech and Ruth, and their 2 boys, Mahlon and Chilion. It's easy to forget that behind every news story about refugees, every statistic of poverty and deprivation from around the world, or in our own country, there are real people. Behind every hospital admissi...