Keep On Keeping On

I did a little reading today from the book of Ruth. It is such a precious book which, in the flesh, shows us how a woman who married a man from another country becomes a widow and leaves her own home and family to travel with her mother-in-law back to the home her family had left during the time of famine and then she finds a new love, a redeemer who took all her financial worries and loneliness away!  On that level you can read it as a beautiful love story, and I personally love to read it as just that, and I always searched for my own Boaz, but on a spiritual level we see an allegory of Christ and the church. We were foreigners, Gentiles, and yet Jesus as our Redeemer, called us His own…He takes us to be His very own Bride. In the story we find Ruth, widowed, far away from home and living in a land where the people worship a strange God, yet she was willing to do it because of the love she had toward her mother-in-law Naomi.

What I want you to see in this story, for anyone looking for a new way of life or a new love, is that Ruth was gleaning faithfully in one field, working morning until night without a break and then the Master noticed her faithfulness and ordered the other harvesters to make life a little easier on her by leaving some good stalks of barley for her to find…kind of like planting colored Easter eggs in plain sight for the little ones to find.  God is so good to us and I am pointing that out to you because I don’t want you to be discouraged. You are probably thinking right now “I have done everything I was supposed to do and look what has happened to me!”

Don’t you think that Ruth felt discouraged? She was young and her husband just took sick and died! Then she moved to a strange country with her mother-in-law to a town where she was probably the subject of the town gossip at the local well. Here was a girl who worshipped idols in a place where the Lord God Jehovah was worshipped. Then she was out working in the hot sun, seemingly with no reward but what little bit she could glean…things that the others had overlooked…the left overs…then the Master saw her plight and came to her rescue. That is where we are…working in a field, feeling a little sorry for ourselves and each of us thinks, “nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen” (could you hear my throaty alto voice belting that out?) But we do have a savior a mighty redeemer and His name is Jesus! 
Psalm 34:5-7 (the Message) Look at Him; give Him your warmest smile. Never hide your feelings from Him.  When I was desperate, I called out, and God got me out of a tight spot. God’s angel sets up a circle of protection around us while we pray.

What is the lesson here? 1. If you want to be noticed, by God or man, take my Armenian grandfather’s advice to just “keep on keeping on”, working faithfully. 2. Don’t get discouraged; no matter how hard or bad everything looks 3. When your Redeemer holds out His hand, TAKE it and hold on to Him for dear life!

Remember the advice in Psalm 34; “give Him your warmest smile, never hide your feelings from Him and He will GET YOU OUT of your tight spot while giving His angels instructions to protect you!” To that I add, AMEN!