Ruth 2:17-20

LOOK AT THIS

Ruth put in quite a day. She gleaned until the sun went down, and then she threshed what she had gathered. Threshing in Old Testament times meant beating the heads of the grain to separate the kernel and then throwing everything into the air with something like a pitchfork. The light, inedible husks and other chaff would blow away and the heavier grain would fall back onto the ground or stone threshing floor. What Ruth took home that day was out of the ordinary. An ephah was three-fifths of a bushel, enough to bake about 20 loaves of bread.

When Naomi asked her daughter-in-law where she gleaned to get so much barley, Ruth said she worked in the field of Boaz. Naomi revealed that this man was her relative, and she praised God for his kindness and generosity.

This scene in God's Word reminds us that our acts of kindness done out of love for the Lord affect more than just the immediate person whom we are helping. Others also reap the benefits of our kind acts, though we may never know how the kind things we do for people end up helping others. May God continue to give us loving and generous hearts, and may he use our acts of kindness to lead to opportunities to verbally share his great act of kindness—sending his Son to redeem us.

"Redeem" is an important word in the Scriptures. That teaching is introduced here in our study of the book of Ruth. The "kinsman-redeemer" was a man who was responsible for protecting his close relatives. He was supposed to provide heirs for a brother or other relative who had died. He was also to redeem (literally "buy back") land that a poor relative had sold outside the family. He was also to redeem (again, "buy back") a relative sold into slavery. (Sometimes people were forced to sell themselves into servitude in order to pay off a debt, and sometimes prisoners of war became slaves.)

In a much greater way, all people were held in slavery. The Bible tells us, "Everyone who sins is a slave to sin" (John 8:34). But Jesus Christ came to be our Redeemer. He bought us back from sin's curse. The price he paid was his holy, precious blood and his innocent sufferings and death. "We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins" (Ephesians 1:7). Jesus bought us back; we are his, to love and to serve him and others in his name.