In addition to being a great love story (eventually), the book of Ruth is a beautiful picture of the fact that no person is beyond redemption. There are so many reasons that Ruth is important. She is proof positive that God is no respecter of persons. His willingness to include a non-Jewish person in the lineage of Christ is another demonstration that salvation is available to all.
This story, however, begins amidst tragedy. A famine. The death of a patriarch. Then the death of two sons/husbands. Not exactly the place you would expect a beautiful story of provision to begin. The most refreshing part of the way this story begins is its honesty. Life is not always harps and flowers. Sometimes life brings unexpected things that we never could have planned for emotionally.
But isn’t that more realistic to our life experience? What if God’s plan all along was to take us farther than we planned to go because we encounter Him in the midst of something we never could have expected. I think that the heart of this story. Not that God navigates us around tragedy… but through it.
re:THINK 