Listen to Your Heart: The Story of Ruth

In the book of Ruth we are introduced to a Jewish family consisting of a married couple… Elimilech and Naomi and their two sons… Mahlon and Kilion. There is a great famine in Judah so they temporarily relocate to the gentile country of Moab where there is food.

Elimilech dies in Moab and Naomi becomes a widow. Even in this life changing event Naomi finds some joy (for a while) as her two sons marry two young Moabite women… Orpah and Ruth and the prospect of grandchildren and an extension of Naomi’s family line looks promising.

But Mahlon and Kilion are married to their wives for ten years and no children… and then tragedy is compounded with tragedy and both Mahlon and Kilion die and now there are three widows living together… Naomi, Orpah and Ruth.

Naomi decides to go back to her hometown of Bethlehem and urges her daughter-in-laws not to come with her. After all, both of their parents are still alive, there hometown is in Moab along with all their friends. With many tears Orpah takes Naomi’s advice but not Ruth. Ruth utters these famous words…

“Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.”

You see, Ruth probably became a Jew when she married Kilion and she wasn’t going to turn her back on Naomi and watch her walk the road to Bethlehem by herself to an uncertain future. She just wasn’t going to do it. Whatever the future held they would face it together and trust in God.

When they get to Bethlehem the whole town is “stirred up” and excited to see Naomi and of course they hear the story of Ruth’s unwavering devotion to Naomi and that story is told and retold through-out Bethlehem.

Ruth, following the Jewish system to provide for widows goes out to glean the fields. That is to follow the harvesters and collect whatever they have missed and ends up in a field owned by an older man named Boaz. Boaz happens to be a “kinsman-redeemer” a relative of Elimilech’s who is obligated to buy Elimilech’s ancestral land from his widow Naomi and take Ruth as his wife (and provide her with a child) to continue the familial line of Elimilech.

Boaz notices Ruth and asks who she is. He already knows Ruth by reputation and even though he is much older than Ruth commends her for not running after a younger man and makes her his wife.

Ruth becomes pregnant and she and Boaz have a son named Obed. The town is ecstatic and over joyed for Naomi. They give a blessing to Naomi and Obed and proclaim that Ruth is worth 7 sons to Naomi.

The book finishes by giving a short genealogy that shows that Obed’s son is Jesse and Jesse’s son is David (who killed Goliath). Ruth the young woman from Moab is the great grandmother of the famous and renowned King David.

We never hear anything else about Orpah. She probably went to live with her mom and dad and then married and had children and probably lived a nice life in Moab. She took Naomi’s advice and made a perfectly logical choice.

Ruth followed her heart and with no assurance of what the future might hold walked to Bethlehem hand in hand with Naomi.

Not only did God bless her with a great grandson in David… King of Israel (whom she probably knew) but also blessed her to be the mother of Jesus Christ… King of the Earth for eternity.

Logical decisions are good but may fail us. Always listen to your heart. Ruth did and look what God did for her.

Practice Management for Churches

Successful businesses usually have a superior front desk. After all, the front desk is who your clientele sees first and who they see last so it’s important to make a good impression at the front desk. At the front desk you hire for personality and not for skills… you can train skills but you can’t train personality.

I recently had to join a new gym because my old gym closed down. I was in there one day and a very personable young man who happened (as I found out later) to be the director of trainers for this corporate owned gym walked up to me and introduced himself. He showed interest in me and invited me to join his Kettlebell class. He had personality and advanced social skills.

After several weeks in his class he turned the class over to a young woman trainer. I had noticed this trainer before and found her to be quiet and aloof and had already made the judgment that she wasn’t very “good”, but I loved the Kettlebell class and continued on.

I found this woman to be very skilled and once I got to know her came to like her and found her class to be better than the other guys.

In congregations, it is very important to greet visitors in such a way that they want to continue “the class”… so to speak.

Congregations should identify those (men and women) who have winning personalities (so important in businesses and gyms) and place them in a position to greet visitors. That means they probably need to sit in the back or make their way to the back during the announcements at the close of services because visitors tend to leave early. This way the greeters can hold the visitors up so the rest of the congregation can interact with them.

It takes a team in congregations and everyone needs to understand their own strengths and weaknesses.

We have an employee who works back in out kennel and it takes a special person to work back there with all the barking, etc. When Ethel (not her real name) brings boarding dogs up she interacts with the owners and they just love her. Ethel could never work at our front desk (and she knows that) but she is one of our most valuable employees and makes our business better.

Let’s work on making our congregations better too.