2024_03_22 Insight Post- Angela Walthall
This week’s reading- Ruth 1-4, Matthew 1:5
As I listened to the book of Ruth on my morning walk this week, I was taken aback by my intense emotions throughout the reading. I was upset about how women were treated during that time in history. I tried to remember that that was just how it was back then. Then, I was touched by Ruth’s loyalty to Naomi, her mother-in-law. When Ruth says, “Don’t ask me to leave you and turn back. Wherever you go, I will go, wherever you live I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Wherever you die, I will die…” Ruth 1:16-17. Ruth’s loyalty was remarkable. Would I have been that loyal then in history, or would I have returned home like Orpah?
Then, I was a little confused by the family redeemer marriage situation, and how Ruth seemed to have no say in her future; that marrying Boaz was the only way for her to improve her situation. I must remember that all these emotions are from a woman living in the modern world, where I have privileges that they did not.
As chapter four is finishing, I am in tears, thinking about the goodness of God. Ruth lost her husband and made a tough decision to stay with Naomi, working hard to provide for herself and Naomi. Ruth is now married to Boaz, an honest, hardworking, and loyal man, and has a child who becomes part of Jesus’s lineage. Naomi has a grandchild she never thought she would have after her sons died. How great is our God that through all the pain of life, he is still using things for our good? God is so good!!!
Angela Walthall
Finance Assistant