Day 15: Weird Food Combinations: Law, Love, & Grace (Ruth 2:17 – 20a)
Today’s Passage: Ruth 2:17-20a
What is the weirdest food combination you enjoy?
Is it peanut butter and pickles? Frosted flakes with cheese? Certainly, this may be worth a google search on your part.
I bring this up because there are times when we envision that certain things just do NOT go together—and we find out that we are wrong!
How do you feel about God’s Law going together with Love and Grace?
You know, all those “thou shall not” and “thou shall”, do they make you feel all warm and cuddly?
Forgive my sarcasm, but seriously, how do you think (rather than feel) about God’s Law fitting together with Love and Grace?
Often, when we see love and grace in action, we have positive feelings. In reading this part of the Book of Ruth that is what I am experiencing. Boaz is being gracious to Ruth, and Ruth in turn is being gracious to Naomi. Naomi names it in the first half of verse 20:
“May he be blessed by the Lord, whose kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead!”
There it is, again, that amazing word. I almost read over as our English translates the Hebrew word, kindness.
Naomi names by the word she knows: hesed.
As I ponder this moment, I am struck by the source of it. The root of this kindness is obedience to the Law. Earlier I cited Lv.19:9-10 and other verses requiring that scraps be left behind. I find it striking, Boaz’s joyful obedience to the Law goes far beyond the letter of it, living the spirit of it, and the result is hesed.
As I have noted, I have been pondering this idea of God’s Providence as I am reading The Book of Ruth. In this short snippet Naomi calls out partly how God works. He does not wave a wand and over-ride human agency. No, he invites people through obedience to Him, to the Law, to be his agents of love and grace.
2 Corinthians 8:1-15 describes this idea in the hard work believers should practice in God’s service for one another.
I am again reminded that Love and Grace, soft and cuddly as they may feel, come through a determined spirit of obedience. Satan is not interested. His aim is making us selfish. The aim of God’s Law is self-less-ness.
You might even conclude that Boaz’s response is spurred on by Ruth’s hard work for her mother-in-law. We read in verse 11 that Boaz had heard of the return of Naomi and Ruth to Bethlehem from Moab. He had heard that Ruth had come to faith in Yahweh, and of her devoted service to her mother-in-law. The news of Ruth’s persistence all day at her gleaning must have reinforced all he had heard.
Ruth’s motivation was out of her great love for Naomi, and Naomi’s life was a life that reflected her trust in God and God’s Providence. Her attitude has been to see the hand of the Lord in the circumstances of her life.
Which brings me back to peanut butter and pickles. Not quite. It brings me back to how there are some things that go together which do not seem natural: Law – Love – Grace.
And you and I will only follow the Law if we believe in God and God’s Providence in our life.
How do we do that? Pray. Pray that you and I can see in all our circumstances the hand of a gracious God.