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August 6, 2008
The Big IT
Read Ruth 4:17-22
Several years ago, when our Open House group of college and young careers was just beginning, it seemed that everyone had one thing in common. These earnest disciples, who had just returned from Israel, were each looking to know God's will for their lives and to walk in it. They wanted to understand the overarching purpose for which they were made and to get in the groove, to see IT and to do IT! We coined a phrase then which has stuck: Everyone is looking for 'the big IT.'
Nothing wrong with that, right? Shouldn't we all have such a zeal for God? Absolutely! But looking for the big IT can also be a trap, equally likely to bring discouragement, confusion or pride. Walking fully in God's purposes requires daily, and often difficult, faith and faithfulness. We rarely understand the value of such obedience on the day it is asked of us. Sometimes we can't even see it in our lifetimes. Our last reading in Ruth today illustrates this beautifully.
The first phrase of verse 17, in my New Living Version, reads this way: The neighbor women said, "Now at last Naomi has a son again!" Ruth's faith in Israel's God, and her faithfulness to Naomi, had resulted in a birth she hadn't dreamed possible. Now, not only did she have a husband and a son, but she had provided for the widow Naomi a continuation of her family which Naomi never dreamed possible. Back when the story began, Naomi selflessly urged Ruth to stay home in Moab because Naomi was sure her own life would be a dead end for both of them.
If Ruth had been looking for the big IT of her life, she most certainly would have said verse 17 was IT! And she would have been right, at least partially. She had joined herself to Israel and given Naomi a son to carry on her family name. But in the next half of the verse, and the genealogy that follows, we see what Ruth could never have seen. The author of the book of Ruth considers this to be the big kicker -- the surprise ending -- Ruth's faith and faithfulness led to the birth of King David's grandfather. Ruth has become a great-grandmother to David, Israel's treasured leader, so dear to God's heart. Only she never knew it! She may have lived to know and love her own grandson, Jesse, David's father, but she could never have seen how critical to her adopted people, Israel, her own sacrificial love to Naomi would be.
Even more fantastic, we know what the author of the book never dreamed, that Ruth's son, Obed, as grandfather to King David, became an ancestor of Jesus, Israel's Messiah.
Surely this was Ruth's biggest IT! But on the day she decided to walk on with Naomi - on the days she gleaned so diligently in the heat of the fields - on the day she risked everything to draw close to Boaz - on the day she gave birth - on the days she changed 'diapers,' cared for a fussy child, or shared her baby with the neighborhood women - Ruth could have no idea what her mundane and costly obedience would mean.
Ruth's diligence, sacrifice and risk, Boaz's attentive kindness, Naomi's wisdom, even the neighbors' encouragement and prayer, all add up to more fruit and significance than any of them could have imagined.
I see at least two applications for us:
1. God uses the most ordinary, unexpected, even undeserving people to accomplish his great and loving plans. The genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah, includes gentiles, women, and even a prostitute. We all have such a hunger to matter, to be important. We may feel like we're nobody special, and like we're doing nothing that seems particularly earth shattering, but our lives have enormous significance for God.
When are you most tempted to feel ordinary, invisible or doomed to insignificance? Can you give this to God, acknowledging that your purpose in life is his concern?
2. God's big IT -- his purposes for us and for our world -- is worked out through daily, small-seeming, mundane choices to love and obey God. We can't measure our own significance and we probably need to give up trying. What we can do is attach great significance to whatever he has put before us to do, today, tomorrow, the next day.
What part of your daily work is most difficult or even boring and seemingly insignificant? What would change if you remembered that, given to him, even the most ordinary kinds of faithfulness matter extraordinarily?
Praise God for his faithfulness to us!
"For I know the plans I have for you," says the Lord. "They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope." Jeremiah 29:11
Marcia Lebhar
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