Day 3: Does God Care About Me—Today? (Ruth 1:1-2a)
Today’s Passage: Ruth 1:1-2
Does God really exist is less the question, then does God really care about me?
Most people who wonder if God exists are not engaged in some philosophical noodling, no they (we) are trying to make sense of the tangle, or tragedy, we find ourselves in.
“Surely if there were a God, that is described as loving and merciful and gracious, surely, I would not be experiencing this pain, would I?”
The Book of Ruth proclaims,
God is interested in you and involved in your life—and he does this in the middle of our muddles and murky moments that cause us to question his existence.
Rather than try and argue that point, let’s enter the text and see if you come to this conclusion.
First, the book is not about God in the abstract, but rather God in our world.
Second, we see that God’s involvement in his world is through people, His people.
Third, the book is not some philosophical treatise about God and people in general. It is about people with specific names. And it is even more specific, it is about a family, a common family—and God’s involvement with them.
My point is that God is interested in everyone, at a detailed daily level of life.
Consider the situation—it is truly an ordeal, and unfortunately a rather all too frequent ordeal in our world, even today.
Elimelech needs food for his family.
How common is this? Today, millions of people are migrating for food. At a more local level, how many people move for work, in order that they might have food?
Elimelech takes his family and goes to a foreign land.
No move is easy. I have moved 6 times. After each of the last 4 I said, “I am never doing that again!” It is expensive and hard work.
Elimelech’s is difficult.
He leaves Bethlehem (ironically which means House of Bread) and moves about 50 miles away to the high plains of Moab, east of the Dead Sea.
Commentators have asked, “Why does he go to a place that knows not the One True Living God? Does he not trust God’s Providence?” Perhaps, but another possibility is he felt led by God. God certainly has sent people to foreign lands before.
Rather than extrapolate and speculate, I might note that we are one sentence into the text—let’s deal with what we know.
We know that a family is facing a difficult time.
We know God is involved. How? Because this is a book of the Bible, it is God’s Word, God has inspired this story be written down and told to us—He is the author.
Which brings us to the “here and now”. If God is the author of life (Jn 14:6), then He is the author of your life. You are His workmanship, His creation. He cares and is involved.
We, each of us, are in varied seasons and chapters of our lives. Some of us are in times of plenty and comfort, others of us in times of scarcity and hardship.