The stage is set - August 3, 2010
The stage is set - August 3, 2010
In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab. The man's name was Elimelech, his wife's name Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Kilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there. Now Elimelech, Naomi's husband, died, and she was left with her two sons. They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth. After they had lived there about ten years, both Mahlon and Kilion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband.
Ruth 1:1-5
Today we begin reading through the four chapters that make up the Book of Ruth recorded in the Old Testament. In the first five verses of the opening chapter we meet six people. If someone were to make a play out of the love story that is "Ruth," you might say that three of these people "die in the opening scene." Naomi's husband, who had moved his wife and two sons to the country of Moab because of a famine in the land, died, and left his wife as a widow in a foreign country. Eventually her two sons married Moabite women—relatives of the Israelites through Abraham's nephew Lot—but Naomi's two sons soon died as well. The stage is now set with three widows—two of them relatively young—left alone, left to decide what they will do to provide for themselves.
More importantly, the stage is also set for us to watch God's grace unfold. We will see God's grace in the life of Naomi. We will see God's grace in Ruth's spiritual life as well as in her life back in Judah. But we will also—and here is our purpose for reading this book together—see God's grace to us. Through Ruth God preserved the line of the Savior. Through Ruth God brought our Savior into the world.
May God bless our study of this portion of his Word!
Heavenly Father, I thank you for providing me with family and friends, with food and drink. I thank you for sending your Son to save me from my sin. Amen.
Today's Devotion is brought to you by WELS and www.WhatAboutJesus.com
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
