Ruth 2:17-23 – “A Day”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹⁷And she gleaned in the field until the evening and she threshed [that] which she had gleaned and it was about an ephah of barley. ¹⁸And she carried and she came [to] the city and her mother-in-law saw [that] which she had gathered and she brought out and she gave to her [that] which she had spared from her fullness. ¹⁹And her mother-in-law said to her, “Where did you glean (intensively) today and, oh, please, [where] did you work? Blessed be the one noticing you.” And she made known to her mother-in-law whom she had worked with and she said, “The name of the man with whom I worked today [is] Boaz.” ²⁰And Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “Blessed be he by the LORD, who has not left his kindness to the living and to the dead” and Naomi said to her, “The man [is] near to us. He [is] [one of] our kinsman-redeemers.” ²¹And Ruth the Moabitess also said, “He said to me, ‘Stay near my young men until they finish the all of my harvest.’” ²²And Naomi said to Ruth, her daughter-in-law, “[It is] good, my daughter, that you go out with his young women and not will they (masc. pl.) hurt you in the field of another. ²³And she clung to the young women of Boaz, gleaning until the end of the harvest of the barley and the harvest of the wheat and she dwelt with her mother-in-law.

There is something I have wanted to post ever since I started chapter 2 and now seems an appropriate point to interject it. I suppose as I type someone could consider this negative, but I don’t intend it that way at all.

What is amazing to me is to realize the significance of this specific day in the life of Naomi and particularly for Ruth. I will focus on Ruth to try to communicate my point. Basically for Ruth life has been a series of disappointments and heartaches. If I’m not reading too much into the text, I suspect, as I’ve related earlier, that Ruth was particularly drawn to Mahlon and his family because she saw the real love they had for each other. Ruth grew up in a culture where parents sacrificed their children and I suspect that fact alone made them a culture where you couldn’t trust anyone, not even your own mother. Ruth married into this unusual family, then before they could even have children, her husband is dead. For whatever reason, she couldn’t or didn’t want to go home. She took up with Naomi but eventually their money ran out and all Naomi could do was go back to Israel. Ruth had to make the painful choice to leave everything she knew and go with Naomi to a place where she would be not only a widow but a foreign one at that. There would be no one in Israel that cared if she lived or died. They arrived in Israel and they were so destitute Ruth had to resort to going out and gleaning behind the harvesters. That would have been about a half a step above begging. And Ruth would know she had no protector – that being a woman and a foreigner she could be very rudely treated.

So here she is. She made this choice to embrace the God of Israel, moved there with Naomi, and basically nothing has changed. She gets up one morning, a destitute widow, probably hungry, and with no choice but to basically go out begging, hoping perhaps to return home in the evening with enough food for a single meal for her and Naomi. Then she could get up early the next morning and do it again. As she arose and headed out that morning, for all she knew nothing would ever change. Life has been very hard. Other than faith, she had no observable hope that anything would ever change.

But today is a very special day for Ruth. Little did she know that it was “over.” Today everything will change. Today she will meet Boaz. Today she will enjoy a kindness beyond her wildest expectations. Today she will bring home not just a single meal but five days’ worth and a plan in place to end up with a six months’ supply! The events of this day will set in motion her marriage to this wealthy man Boaz, the birth of a son, and Ruth’s inclusion in the very lineage of the Messiah. Little did she know that this day would be the day when everything changes.

Job had a similar experience. He fell into his trials, lost his family, his wealth, and finally his health. Everything went badly wrong and then things just drug on and on and on in this black seemingly hopeless world. But there was a day, one day when he woke up like any other day not realizing that today it would be “over.” His time of trouble came to a very clear end and the Bible says, “After Job had prayed for his friends, the Lord restored his fortunes and gave him twice as much as he had before…After this, Job lived a hundred and forty years; he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation. And so Job died, an old man and full of years” (42:10,16,17). There was an “end” to his trials. There was a day when everything changed.

Here’s my suggestion: First of all, we all have our trials and troubles and in this world we always will. Hebrews 12:7,8 says, “Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all.” So trials and troubles in and of themselves are just part of life. However, like Ruth and Job, there may be extended periods of very painful trial that seem endless. We may find ourselves going through months or even years when “nothing goes right.”

In this kind of world David said, “I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord” (Ps 27:13,14). Notice he says, “In the land of the living.” “I will see the goodness of the Lord, … in the land of the living.” He means in this world. He says he is sure no matter how black things seem, he is confident somehow, in this world, he will yet see the goodness of the Lord – he will see a day when the darkness ends and the Lord’s light shines on him again, just like it did for Job and Ruth.

I don’t know if this is a common experience for all believers, but it certainly happened in my life. My wife and I went through a period of darkness that lingered seriously for ten years. It finally got to the point where we told each other, “This is it. We either trust God or we don’t.” We resolved that even if nothing ever changed, we would never stop trusting Him. We knew that, worst case, one day we would die and then it would all be over.

But David’s words, “in the land of the living” kept coming back to my mind. Could I believe I would see the goodness of the Lord “in the land of the living?” I had no doubt that death would usher me into paradise, but could I say I was confident there would be a day, a turning-point while I yet lived in this world?

We read in Hebrews 11:12-40 about some who “through faith conquered kingdoms” but others who “wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute and afflicted.” These words suggest to me that apparently there are people who suffer prolonged affliction in this world and their only release is death itself. That is a possibility and I concluded that I cannot (at least at this time) say with confidence that “I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” It might go on until I die.

But … knowing the Lord and knowing how kind He is, I concluded that the most likely scenario would be an end to the troubles. Yes, He might sometimes, in His wisdom, let someone suffer right through death’s door, but I doubt that is His normal plan. Similarly, He does allow that some people never marry, never have children, but that isn’t the “norm.” He is a God of blessings and his modus operandi is to bless His children. He lovingly allows trials because we need them but behind it all is His great big fatherly heart of love.

So, in my own life, I surmised that, most likely, someday it would end. Like Job, one day I would wake up and that day it would be “over.” That day would be a turning point. That day the darkness would end and from then on everything would be different. On the other hand, I would just get up every day, trust the Lord He knows what He’s doing, do whatever I believed was good and right for me to do today, and by His grace keep it up until I died, if that was His plan.

And that day did come. The phone rang and nothing has been the same since. That awful darkness is gone. Every day it seems He has gone ahead and cooked up such blessings we can’t comprehend it all. We still have trials and troubles. My back and legs ache almost unbearably. Money is still always an issue.  There are constantly problems that have to be dealt with. But this is totally different. It’s clear that the overall context of our life now is blessings “exceedingly abundantly above anything we could have asked or thought.” The troubles now are just sort of the spice that keeps life interesting, rather than a cold suffocating endless darkness.

I am suggesting this is exactly what happened to Ruth. I saw it before in Job. Then I saw it my own life. And now I believe I see it in Ruth. Part of the Lord’s plan for her life was this period of endless darkness. Even while she trusted Him, she didn’t necessarily get to see the benefit of that faith. And she seems to have resolved to go on trusting Him and just being who she was supposed to be, even if that meant something a half step above begging. But, while the Lord may need to allow this for a person’s eternal good, it isn’t His normal plan to let it go on forever. He just enjoys blessing too much. And so there was a day when it all ended for Ruth, a day when a man said to her, “Listen, my daughter …”, a day when suddenly the sun broke through the clouds and things were never the same.

It happened in Job’s life, it happened in mine, and it happened to Ruth.

The conclusion of it all for me is that I will say with confidence, “I will yet see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living” … and if not, then may He grant me the grace to say and keep on saying, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.”

“Wait for the Lord, be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord” (Psalm 27:14).

We never know what a day will bring.