12/6/10

Ruth

I studied the book of Ruth this week for a short story essay in my English class-mainly chapter 3. and OH MY GOSH.. if you haven't read it, go. read it. I feel like it upped this weeks significance because it had such an impact on me.
In chapter 3,( this is after Ruth and Naomi lost everything, and Ruth makes a promise to follow and take care of Naomi. She leaves her family and home and religion and takes upon herself everything that Naomi believes and follows her to her to a totally different country-yikes.. I can't even imagine.)
Naomi shares her desire for Ruth to be happy and loved once again. She tells Ruth that she needs to go present herself to Boaz. Naomi gives Ruth instructions as to how to prepare herself to meet with Boaz. She then tells Ruth to go to the threshing floor, where Boaz was protecting the harvested grain. She was to uncover his feet and lie down, which symbolized commitment and submission. Ruth needed to be redeemed, so she went to her kinsman (which pretty much means the only person capable of saving, taking care of, redeeming ect.) and humbled herself before Him and waited for Him to respond. I feel like we need to follow Ruth ... We need to be redeemed over and over again... but it is almost like we forget the process. First, we need to prepare ourselves to enter into His presence. James talks about the fact that we need to have clean hands and pure hearts. Next we need to fall at His feet in faith and surrender ourselves, our dreams, our passions, our desires... then we need to wait on Him.

It's been hard trying to figure out what it means for me to fully surrender all of these things to Christ... but just like Ruth, I want to be made new.

The next couple of verses say that when Boaz noticed that Ruth was there, he was pleased. He called her a woman of excellence. ... and then they get married later and have a kid and their family ends up being a part of the Genealogy of Jesus blahblahblah...
but I just think its so cool that this amazing love story is a picture of our relationship with Jesus.






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