Brian Maloy

This is the transcript (auto-generated) from this Sunday School Lesson — no editing, just copied here.

Okay, let’s go ahead and read. We’re going to start in verse 1. I’ll tell you when the quarterly picks up if that’s where you’re following. But we are reading Ruth chapter 1 and Ruth chapter 2.

During the time of the judges, there was a famine in the land. A man left Bethlehem in Judah with his wife and 2 sons to stay in the territory of Moab for a while. The man’s name was Elimelech, and his wife’s name was Naomi. The names of his sons were Malon and Chilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem and Judah. They entered the fields of Moab and settled there.

Naomi’s husband Elimelech died, and she was left with her 2 sons. Her sons took Moabite women as their wives. One was named Orpah, and the other was named Ruth. After they lived in Moab about 10 years, both Malon and Chilion also died, and the woman was left without her 2 children and without her husband.

She and her daughters-in-law set out to return from the territory of Moab because she had heard in Moab that the Lord had paid attention to his people’s need by providing them food. She left the place where she had been living accompanied by her 2 daughters-in-law and traveled along the road leading back to the land of Judah.

Naomi said to them, “Each of you go back to your mother’s home. May the Lord show kindness to you as you have shown to the dead and to me. May the Lord grant each of you rest in the house of a new husband.” And she kissed them and they wept loudly. And they said to her, “We insist on returning with you to your people.”

This is verse 11 where the quarterly picks up. But Naomi replied, “Return home, my daughters. Why do you want to go with me? Am I able to have any more sons who could become your husbands? Return home, my daughters. Go on, for I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me to have a husband tonight and bear sons, would you be willing to wait for them to grow up? Would you restrain yourselves from remarrying? No, my daughters, my life is much too bitter for you to share because the Lord’s hand has turned against me.”

And again, they wept loudly and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. Naomi said, “Look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods. Follow your sister-in-law.”

Verse 16. But Ruth replied, “Don’t plead with me to abandon you or to return and not follow you. For wherever you go, I will go. And wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people and your God will be my God. Where you die, I will die. And there I will be buried. May the Lord punish me and do so severely if anything but death separates you and me.”

When Naomi saw that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped talking to her. Verse 19. The 2 of them traveled until they came to Bethlehem. When they entered Bethlehem, the whole town was excited about their arrival and the local women exclaimed, “Can this be Naomi?”

“Don’t call me Naomi, call me Mara,” she answered, “for the Almighty has made me very bitter. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why do you call me Naomi since the Lord has opposed me and the Almighty has afflicted me?”

So Naomi came back from the territory of Moab with her daughter-in-law, Ruth, the Moabitess. They arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.

All right, chapter 2. Now Naomi had a relative on her husband’s side. He was a prominent man of noble character from Elimelech’s family. His name was Boaz. Ruth, the Moabitess, asked Naomi, “Will you let me go into the fields and gather fallen grain behind someone with whom I find favor?” And Naomi answered her, “Go ahead, my daughter.”

So Ruth left and entered the field to gather grain behind the harvesters. She happened to be in the portion of the field belonging to Boaz, who was from Elimelech’s family. Later, when Boaz arrived from Bethlehem, he said to the harvesters, “The Lord be with you.” “The Lord bless you,” they replied.

Verse 5, this is where quarterly picks up. Boaz asked his servant who was in charge of the harvesters, “Whose young woman is this?” And the servant answered, “She is the young Moabite woman who returned with Naomi from the territory of Moab. She asked, ‘Will you let me gather fallen grain among the bundles behind the harvesters?’ And she came and she has been on her feet since early morning, except that she rested a little bit in the shelter.”

And then Boaz said to Ruth, “Listen, my daughter, don’t go and gather grain in another field, and don’t leave this one, but stay here close to my female servants. See which field they are harvesting and follow them. Haven’t I ordered the young men not to touch you? When you are thirsty, go and drink from the jars the young men have filled.”

She fell face down and bowed to the ground and said to him, “Why have I found favor with you so that you notice me, although I am a foreigner?” And Boaz answered her, “Everything you have done for your mother-in-law since your husband’s death has been fully reported to me; how you left your father and mother and your native land, and how you came to a people you didn’t previously know. May the Lord reward you for what you have done, and may you receive full reward from the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge.”

I’m going to read the rest, but this is verse 13. “My lord,” she said, “I have found favor with you, for you have comforted and encouraged your servant, although I am not like one of your female servants.”

At mealtime, Boaz told her, “Come over here and have some bread and dip in the vinegar sauce.” So she sat beside the harvester, and he offered her roasted grain. She ate and was satisfied and had some left over. When she got up to gather grain, Boaz ordered his young men, “Let her even gather grain among the bundles and don’t humiliate her. Pull out some stocks from the bundles for her and leave them for her to gather. Don’t rebuke her.”

So Ruth gathered grain in the field until evening. She beat out what she had gathered and it was about 26 quarts of barley. She picked up the grain and went into town where her mother-in-law saw what she had gleaned. She brought out what she had left over from her meal and gave it to her.

Her mother-in-law said to her, “Where did you gather barley today? And where did you work? May the Lord bless the man who noticed you.” And Ruth told her mother-in-law whom she worked with and said, “The name of the man I worked with today is Boaz.”

And then Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “May the Lord bless him because he has not abandoned his kindness to the living or the dead.” Naomi continued, “The man is a close relative. He’s one of our family redeemers.”

The Ruth Moabitess said, “He also told me, ‘Stay with my young men until they have finished all my harvest.’” So Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “Ruth, my daughter, it is good for you to work with his female servants so that nothing will happen to you in another field.”

Ruth stayed close to Boaz’s female servants and gathered grain until the barley and the wheat harvest were finished, and she lived with her mother-in-law.

All right, so lots to read. But Ruth is, we said this last week, Ruth is so good that it’s sad that we only get 2 weeks to study Ruth. So we have to do a really good job of at least reading all of Ruth, even if we can’t talk about every verse of Ruth. That said, this is a really beautiful book. It’s a beautiful book for many reasons.

Everybody loves, I mean, okay, it’s probably been 15 years-ish. Um, I, we were, we were reading Ruth in our, um, small group years ago. Like we were reading through the whole Bible. We got to Ruth and I was like, “Guys, there’s an old, like sometimes older Christian movies are not the most like cinematography. I mean, they’re not the amazing, but they’re definitely budget films. But I was like, I really want to watch The Ruth.” Like, I just really, like, I think we should.

I’m sitting there, like, the whole time just like, this is awesome. I mean, looking over the cheesy actors and some of the, and like, the rest of our group’s like, “Oh, Brian, why are you so…” I’m like, because it’s such a good story. It’s not unlike why people love Hallmark or now Great American Country and all those cable networks that have happy shows. There’s a reason that those are some of the most watched because people like a good redemption story.

And it’s funny because I don’t know if the non-Christian world gets why. We get why because we live in a world that’s broken and we love when things get fixed. We love when things are made new because that’s the story of the gospel. That’s what’s part of what Jesus did. And Ruth is neat because the gospel is baked right into it. It’s this short 4-chapter book in the Old Testament, not long into the period that they’ve entered into the Holy Land. But yet in this moment, we get a glimpse that flash forward, it foreshadows to Jesus redeeming us.

So it’s beautiful. I’m sad we only get 2 weeks, but that’s okay. So we have to look at Naomi’s story, and we have to break this thing down. We can start here. When Naomi and Ruth are headed back to Bethlehem, what is Naomi’s state? What part of life is she living in right now?

She’s older. Yep. She says multiple times, “Don’t call me Naomi, call me Mara. The Almighty has made me very bitter.” And then she says, “Since the Lord’s opposed me and the Almighty has afflicted me.” She says to her daughter’s-in-law, where is it? I’m not finding the verse, but there’s a verse early on that she makes the comment, like, “God has, oh, the Lord’s hand has turned against me,” verse 13.

So at least 3 times in just the first chapter, she makes a comment that not only has life been unfair, but God has turned against me. I mean, everyone in this room, hopefully can raise their hand, but I won’t make you, has experienced trouble, period. Might be big, might be small. Everyone has experienced trouble.

The reality is we see Naomi’s reaction. And I’m just speaking from my perspective. I think entire life I’ve read the story like, “Come on, Naomi. Everyone knows that God works out the story in the end.” I mean, everyone knows because we all saw the flannel graph version and the flannel graph version talk about 4 minutes to explain. So, you know, as we walked through the flannel graph, it was like, “Oh, sad. And then Boaz and then baby at the end.” I mean, like it. So in a few minutes we see like God’s really good.

So it’s easy, I think, at least for me, when I read it to go like, “Come on, Naomi.” But we’ve all been there. Everybody has been in Naomi’s shoes. Everybody has felt as though, “Why have you done this, God? Why have you turned against me? Why have you, what was the phrase it said? Why have you dealt literally with me?”

Everyone’s been there. If there was a relatable story in Scripture, which there are many, this is a relatable story. Because we might not have experienced that exact thing, but we have experienced trouble. And we have to understand one of the biggest stumbling blocks for people to come to Jesus is trouble. Like, Jesus isn’t a vending machine. I can’t put in my good works coins and get out salvation. That’s just not how the gospel works.

So everybody has been in Ruth’s shoes. I’m sorry, Naomi’s shoes. Likewise, though, I would argue, we’ve all been in Ruth’s shoes. We’ve all walked with someone. In this case, Ruth is quite literally walking with someone. She’s walking with Naomi back to Bethlehem, which I don’t exactly know how far. I didn’t think about it until just now. I’m going to guess it’s not… you know, a saunter down Tesson. It’s a bit of a journey.

So she’s, yeah. Well, it’s far enough that Bethlehem didn’t have any food and Moab did. Right, right. And people would have been flocking quickly if it had been, yeah. I’m actually, I bet our book doesn’t really say. It just has Moab on the other side of the Dead Sea. So it’s not close. Anyway, nevertheless, I will not rabbit trail too hard.

Ruth is literally walking with someone who is deeply sorrowful. I mean, we’ve all been in Ruth’s shoes too. Where someone we love, someone we know, family member, friend, colleague, whoever, is walking through something hard and learning how to love them well. It’s tough.

And we studied Job years ago. Actually, that was my first… That was when I got voluntold that I was teaching our class. That was the first book I got to teach was Job for 6 months. I don’t know if you guys remember that. It was a long… But Job had the 3 friends who… sometimes just talked too much and weren’t necessarily helpful.

I think Ruth is going to show us, I mean, the title of the lesson is literally faithfulness. So we get to see God’s faithfulness and we get to see Ruth’s faithfulness here. But let’s go ahead, let’s reread. There’s a few good questions we might come back to at the very beginning, but let’s go ahead and reread 11 through 15 because I don’t want to derail too much. So 11 through 15. Let’s see.

“But Naomi replied, ‘Return home, my daughters. Why do you want to go with me? Am I able to have any more sons who could become your husbands? Return home, my daughters. Go on, for I am too old to have another husband. Even if I thought there was still hope for me to have a husband tonight and to bear sons, would you be willing to wait for them to grow up? Would you restrain yourselves from remarrying? No, my daughters, my life is much too bitter for you to share because the Lord’s hand is turned against me.’”

Again, they wept loudly and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her. Naomi said, “Look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods. Follow your sister-in-law.”

I mean, it’s amazing. I mean, think about what impact Naomi must have had for them to have such love for Naomi, that they didn’t want to stay with their own people. They were willing to go back. And Orpah does go back, but Ruth clings to her. But they both initially are walking back as though, like, “We’re not going to abandon you,” which is just incredible.

But when we consider, when we look at Naomi, though, and I think this is where… Naomi’s story is so important for us to consider in our own lives. Because whether we have gone through horribly hard things or whether we’re going to go through horribly hard things, they impact every single human life. So understanding where Naomi’s at is important. Understanding how Ruth loves and cares for her through it is important because we know someone who will go through hard things.

But the question I want to ask before we kind of unpack those first few verses, think about how bitterness, I mean, how does bitterness affect our decisions? How does bitterness or grief or anger, how do disappointment, like it doesn’t have to be, bitterness is kind of the extreme, but it might even just be frustration or disappointment. Think about how those things, how do they affect our decisions?

They do. Yes. I mean, poor mom, like after the fire like it’s not as though she wasn’t still grieving all the things that happened too but like our brains were so frazzled like they were I can’t make a decision like I because you can’t and if something as dumb as like the day after going to um REI to get like new backpacks and winter coats and stuff and you’re like I just don’t know like because you’re just I mean your brain’s on overload like the I don’t even know like saying just grief probably isn’t a correct word because it’s like 50,000 emotions that are constantly changing every 4 minutes. But it really affects our decision making.

I mean, it just does. Like, there are still days that I have, like, decision fatigue. I’ve said this before. I never wanted to build a house. Like, that’s totally Carrie Wallman. Like, Carrie would 100%, if someone just, like, handed her, like, design, she’d be like, “Oh, finally.” Where Claire and I were very much like, I liked the old house that we had slowly fixed up because it was slow decisions. I mean, it worked out fine. Like, thankfully, the colors we fixed aren’t…

The siding sat in boxes in our front yard for like, I mean, 4 months, 5 months. And you just sat there like, “Did we pick okay colors?” Because you picked off of the 1 inch square from the siding book. And you’re like, “I really hope that blue and brown go together.” And then they finally went up and it was like, “Oh, praise the Lord they did.” I mean, if they hadn’t, you were just going to be that house with ugly siding because there’s no swapping it out now. I’m sure it’s too expensive. But nevertheless…

Grief, disappointment, frustration, they short-circuit our decision. Yeah, Terry. Verse 14 where it says, “Ruth plundered Naomi.” That word means the same in Hebrew as joined in one flesh. I forgot that I read that somewhere. Yes. I mean, she genuinely committed herself to Naomi. She was personally and spiritually attracted to Naomi.

Yeah, exactly, yeah. Yeah. I mean, and surely just built and built and built. And everyone knows, like, emotions are hard. Because… we don’t always want to be influenced by emotions, but we are influenced by emotions. That’s just the way that God wired us. And it’s so important, like when we read Naomi’s story. I mean, she did suffer unimaginable loss. She went to a foreign land just to make sure that she could provide for her sons, and then she lost everything but her daughter-in-laws. I mean, it’s a horrible…

I think us reading it, you would look and go like, “Well, why would she send them back to their families? Like that’s, they’re all she has left.” Well, she’s bitter. Like at this point, everyone’s watched that movie or you’ve been that person where you’re like, “I don’t want anything. I’m just mad now.” Like that’s, I mean, the very simple version of the emotion that Ruth is wrestling through. Like she doesn’t want company. Misery loves to be alone and frustrated and to pile on.

What do you think? Oh, yeah. Wow. Wow. That’s impressive. I mean, I’ve only hiked straight through 100 miles one time. And it was really hard. And I was in my 20s. That’s pretty amazing, Ruth and Naomi. That’s dedicated. But they walked everywhere. They’re in better shape than we are. Still very impressive. I don’t even want to walk down Tesson to church. That’s mostly because of the crazy traffic, though.

So Naomi experiences this incredible loss. She decides it’s time to go back. There’s food in Bethlehem. That’s where my people are. And the girls go with her. And then she says it’s better for them to stay put. And I do think it is probably more than just her bitterness that makes the decision. She also, she says, and we read this, “I’m too old to have another husband. Even if there’s still hope for me to have a husband tonight and bear sons, would you be willing to wait for them to grow up?”

There was the tradition where if a woman was widowed, someone in the family would marry her to keep the family line going. And she’s looking at this from, there’s not a way for me to do that for you. I can’t provide another husband. There’s not another random brother or uncle or cousin. It’s just me left, which is funny because she says that, but it’s probably because she doesn’t exactly know who’s back in Bethlehem. There’s no certainty that there’s a family member still there behind.

So she goes back. She decides this is best, and she decides they need to stay put. But Ruth clings to Naomi. Yeah, oh, here it is. The Hebrew word, I don’t know why I started to pronounce it, the back maybe. It’s very much that idea of like being united as one, like such extreme loyalty that there’s no separating, which is amazing. It’s the difference. The quarterly makes this note: It’s the contrast between Ruth and Orpah.

Orpah initially was like, “I’m going to go with you. I’m not going to leave you.” But when Naomi says, “Nope. Like, you need to go back to your family,” she’s like, “Okay, I love you. Let’s cry some more. I’ll go home.” Where Ruth very much is so loyal to her that she’s unwilling to leave Naomi, which is unbelievable. Can you imagine if you were in that boat?

I was impressed that a mother-in-law and a daughter-in-law had that love for each other because, you know, it’s… it’s very rare to find that kind of love when you’re not blood related. Yeah, that’s right. It’s pretty neat. I was trying to find something to even relate it to.

And honestly, the only thing I kind of can, my grandmother, so Fred’s 3rd wife, when I and she’s now widowed for the 2nd time too but her daughter-in-law my aunt Suzy, step-aunt Suzy, um even though okay it’s the it’s a Ruth-Naomi situation where like my uncle Brett left I don’t know the whole story don’t really want to… and my grandmother has stayed close and loyal with her daughter-in-law versus her… I mean, and it’s not exactly the same, but it was like the closest mental parallel I could make of like, no, like there’s a loyalty there and there’s a camaraderie and the frustration and the pain and brokenness of that situation. Which isn’t exactly the same, but it’s incredible because it’s very rare to have a mother and a daughter-in-law to remain so loyal to one another.

But, oh yeah, Terry. The unsaid part of this whole story is the influence that Naomi had. Yeah. Because you said, “Your God was my God.” So obviously she was a fantastic witness. Yeah. That she knew this was the truth, and I’m going to, yeah. Which is an incredible thing. It doesn’t say it, but I’m glad you reminded me of that.

It’s so important because that highlights how important our own witness is of the way that we live our lives, the way that we wrestle through struggle, the way that we um speak about God’s kingdom and goodness to other people. That matters because that could be the very thing. I literally just read in my devo this morning—I don’t remember the context exactly—but the part that I highlighted at the end was like, how amazing will it be when all of the pastors and missionaries and teachers and Sunday school people, like all of the folks who have served in the kingdom for decades and didn’t really know if they saw a lot of like fruit out of what they did, for them to then be in eternity and go, “Oh my goodness, that 1 conversation I had in the hallway with that 1 grumpy kid, that was something that actually God used to click and change.”

So we just don’t know the impact that we have because we don’t know how the Holy Spirit’s going to use our actions. There’s a question that’s on 113 that I really like. It says, “Why does loss…” Man, this is a hard question. “Why does loss draw some people closer to God while others struggle with anger toward God?” Very often, those are the 2 extremes. Like big loss or small loss or just trouble. You can fill in a lot of words. It draws some people closer to God very quick and others, it builds a wall very quick. And we’ve seen it happen. We’ve seen both of those 2 things happen many times. So why is that? Yeah. Yep.

I think that is an underrated means of grace, if that makes sense. Life’s awkward when horrible tragedy happens, and we don’t always know: what do I need to do? What’s the best way to love someone? What’s the best way to show them God’s love? Sometimes it’s just being there. I mentioned Job before. I think looking at Job sometimes, you see the friends who just kept going and you’re like, “Shut up.” Not only is this book so many chapters long, but you just keep beating him into the ground. Of course he’s frustrated at the end. Contrast that with Ruth. Ruth’s like, “No, I love you. Your God will be my God. Your people, we’re going.” And then she stops talking, and she just goes with her, and she is faithful. And I think, again, that is an underestimated means of grace in people’s lives.

I think after our tragedies—foster care’s tragedies hide too strong—but tragedy happened for the kids to come to our house. And when that happened, and we thought we would have big kids, and then we had 2 babies, and we had 0 stuff for babies, it was incredible how many friends and family… I am not great at asking for help. Terry knows this. I am not great at asking for help. It’s just… I’m growing in that. But we had to throw up the bat signal that day and just say, “Does anyone have old cribs or old car seats or anything?” Ben was good. Ben ran to Target and bought diapers and bottles. But we had nothing. Which I still look back and go, that’s why I’m still tired. It’s been so many years and I’m still tired. But that was weird.

Nevertheless, that’s not, that’s not the same in the sense of like it was not necessarily grief for us, but just catastrophically big event that happens. But yet immediately when people are like—I mean, I remember Bill and Brandon bringing some meals, like they went to Walmart, bought food—like just those simple things are the things that remind people like, “You aren’t alone.” And again, like, babies are a little bit different, but that’s still a big deal in that weird moment. After the fire, like, there were several of you that showed up and just stood there with us. That was a big deal. Like, those are the things. I remember the 1st person who texted me, which, I mean, it’s just, it’s another world. But those, we underestimate, I think, how much that matters.

We don’t have to walk up and have the right words. Like, I still don’t have the right words for Heather. Like, it still blows my mind, and it’s been… 26 years? But that’s not the point. We hold on to, like, “I’ve got to have the right verse.” No, we don’t. We need to be there. And Ruth is a good reminder of what can keep people from building that wall between them and God. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

And I think that’s it. That’s amazing. That’s really incredible. It’s been 29? 29. It was 97. Oh my goodness, that’s been 29 years. And you still remember it because people being there matter. I mean, that’s… it’s an incredible… I think… we’ve all relived this struggle of like, why do some people, why do hard things draw them closer to God and they lean more deeply? And then why do other things put a divide?

I just had a conversation with someone a month ago, and they were on the side of struggle had caused them to put this massive wall between them and God. And their question to me was like, “I cried out to God over and over and over again. And I just needed relief in that season.” And I was like, “I’m not trying to belittle the pain, but you’re still here. That shows God’s grace. Like, you didn’t crumble.” And they were like, “But I’m just a shell of who I was.” And I’m like, “But you’re a shell of who you were who wants to understand what happened.” Like, that’s still…

But again… I think letting people come around us—again, learning to let people help you, like letting people come around you and loving well, letting people just be with us—can be that little bit of grace that keeps us from building that wall of frustration. And I think it’s the struggle people have. I wrote this down so I wouldn’t forget: when we view hardship in our life through the lens of God’s sovereignty—you know, that God is above all things, God understands, God is not bound as we are—we can reframe the hard things through hope. Because we don’t understand, but we know God, and we understand that God is good. But if we view God not as a sovereign God, but as our problem solver or like our genie, we’re going to be frustrated.

And there are way too many Christians who God is kind of their cosmic pinata. Like, “If I beat him with the stick enough.” We were at the park the other day, and there was a little girl. It was a Hispanic family, so there was like 80 of them at the pavilion, and they had a pinata pulled up for this. This little girl was like, I think she had won. I mean, she was not really like able to go after it. They held her up anyway, but then all the dads were like, “It’s my turn.” And it was 100 times funnier, because then you’re watching these grown men that are like, you know, they pull the rope so it flops around, and these grown men are like trying to hit it, and you’re like, “I shouldn’t be so entertained,” but they’re so competitive about this thing, and I’m like, yeah, I would be too. But nevertheless, God is not our cosmic pinata or vending machine or genie. And that… that is how many people view God. And that is going to set them up for frustration. That’s kind of where the prosperity gospel thing falls apart. Because that’s just not the reality of who God is. Terry, yeah. Right. Yep. Amen.

Where did I write this? And without that grief, it would be much harder to step into other people’s. I had a K-life kid, and he would not call it a learning disability. He called it his LD. And really what Spencer’s LD was, he was a little lazy because he was the 3rd born and didn’t really want to do school. I think there might have been a little bit of ADHD, but I was like, “Hmm, Spencer.” Same. But nevertheless, Spencer really let it bother him, and it was part of his identity, and he felt like less than from the real high-achieving kids and stuff.

And I was like, “Spencer,” this was clearly a Holy Spirit moment because I was not this smart. I was like, “What if that LD, your learning disability—what if that’s the very thing that helps you connect with another kid someday and share the gospel in a meaningful way? What if you’re able to share, like, ‘Yes, this is a hard part of school for me. Like, I really wrestled through this as a kid. But I realized that God did not, that wasn’t my identity’?” My identity was in… I was like, “That might be the very reason you have that.” And he was like, it changed his whole perspective. And I was like, “Whoa, go God.” I mean, it was very neat in that moment. But that’s the reality of, like, and again, that’s such a minor thing compared to the catastrophe of Naomi’s story.

But when we see the hard things in our life through the lens of God’s sovereignty, it gives us a lot of hope because we know it’s not the final, it’s not the conclusion of the story. When we see God through the lens of like, “You are my problem solver, you are my vending machine,” then all of a sudden we’re going to struggle and we get frustrated. There’s a really good book I read after the fire called “Therefore I Have Hope.” I think I’ve mentioned this book before and it was a youth pastor who… and he was on a youth retreat with his kids or with his students.

And he gets to his car the next morning and has like 20 phone calls from his wife. And in the middle of the night, she had put their son to bed—I think he was 2 or 3, like toddlerish age—and he just didn’t wake up. And they really still didn’t know why, years later. But he wrote this book. It was kind of his theological wrestling through it. I mean, he was seminary trained. He knew all the right answers, but now he had to live the right answers. And he said—and I think it was even in the intro, I used to skip, this is not important, I used to skip intros to books just because it felt like, “No, I’ve got to get to the chapter 1.” And I’ve started reading them lately, and they’re like sometimes much more sincere and real. Anyway, just read intros to books now.

But he said, I think in the intro, that he, as a youth pastor, and he’d been in ministry for a good 10 years, he said, “I always watched and walked through hard things with people, and I always wondered how I would respond if I was in their shoes.” He was like, and this… I don’t remember exactly how he phrased it. The heart behind it was, as much as I’m still grieving the loss of my little boy, I can look now and go, “Thank you, Jesus, that my response in walking through this drew me closer to you, not pulled me away.”

And he said it very poetically and very beautifully. But I think that is the great struggle that we, and we talk about, the analogy in scripture comes out a lot—poor metaphor. Metaphor? Metaphor. Of fire and how fire refines and like the purity of our faith. Well, in this situation, like I think that’s a question we have to ask ourselves is: when I go through the hard thing, or I’m walking through the hard thing of someone else, what is the fire drawing out? What is it revealing?

You know, I always, we talked as like mom’s mom, grandma got older, like that she got sweeter and sweeter. And it was like, man, like, and we talked to kind of about like, it just kind of showed that’s who she really always was because it wasn’t like she got older and got like really mean. Um, we know some of those people, but as we—I remember like, I mean, grandma passed away when I was 26, 25, somewhere in there and she was 95, but like she had just proceeded to get gentler and kinder and sweeter. And I remember thinking like, “Man, I really hope when I’m old and I’m like at that point in life where like there’s no pretense, there’s no, you just, you are who, that that’s who I am too.” Because life is now revealed like the true nature.

And I think that’s what we see happening with this story is a call to: what is hardship going to do to me? Because we’re all going to experience it. It’s genuinely psychotic foolishness to act like I’m exempt from hardship. Everyone experiences hardship. Anyway, so there’s many, many, many things here. But the challenge is: how do we let our pain or sorrow or hurt, no matter how big or small, how do we let it be a means of deepening our faith, not a means of building a wall? Because those are really the 2 options and I know which one I want.

Um, okay, let’s, let’s go, let’s read the best, the most famous part of Ruth. Let’s read 16 through 18, by far the part we know so good. Okay, 16: “But Ruth replied, ‘Don’t plead with me to abandon you or to return and not follow you, for wherever you go I will go, and wherever you live I will live, and your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord punish me and do so severely if anything but death separates you and me.’” And when Naomi saw that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped talking to her.

It’s funny. Some versions don’t say exactly “stop talking to her.” Some say kind of like, “let it go.” Either way, she let it go. She sees that she is not going to convince Ruth otherwise, so Ruth goes right alongside Naomi. And it’s beautiful. This is a weird side note, and I didn’t bring that right Bible. The Legacy Standard Bible that I use sometimes—it’s like the New American Standard that’s been updated recently—it would have had Yahweh there because Ruth actually says, “Yahweh will be my God.” She doesn’t say “Your God will be my God” in her language. She actually calls God by his name. “He, your Yahweh, is now my God.” So she genuinely embraces the God of the Hebrews and not just in theory as a God, which is very, very cool.

But on 113, there’s another good question. It says, “What role does loyalty play in our relationship with God and others?” What do you think? What does loyalty mean to us? Yeah. That aren’t quick to run away. I mean, do you think our culture really values loyalty that much? Now, what’s weird is I think it would say that it does, but it doesn’t really. I mean, you think about corporate America. 75 years ago, if you were, if you were willing to, like, work hard, be a part of a company and put in and be the company man, like that was rewarded. Like the loyalty, like you showing loyalty to your company. They showed loyalty back.

Now it’s morphed. Like I read—and this has been, this is a little bit dated, but like probably in the last 5 years, 10 years ago, it was sad too. 10 years ago, they talked about how the average millennial—and I’m technically a millennial, I’m like right on the edge of X to millennial—so I think millennials were like mid-80s to like early 2000s? I could be wrong. And then there’s Gen Zs and then Alphas. I think the names are dumb because no one totally fits, but they try to generalize. But millennials, they said, would change jobs 6 to 8 times in their life, but change careers 3 or 4. And I remember reading that going, “Well, that’s dumb.” And then I was like, “Oh my gosh, Brian, that’s what you did.” And I was like, ah, life goes on.

The point being, the younger generations are even less likely to stay put. Like, they’ll pivot. You look at resumes now, and they’ll be a young person—and I say young person, someone younger than me, someone that’s like 20s, 30s—they’ll have changed jobs every year, every 2 years. And they’re just like, “Oh, I just kind of got bored with it,” or like, “Oh, it really wasn’t fulfilling me.” And they’ll just jump ship. And you look at the resume, and you’re like, “I’m not trying to be rude, but no thank you.” Yeah, like that’s a depressing talk for my 1st day.

But it’s so weird because I genuinely think as a culture we would say loyalty is important. But we don’t really receive it from places and we don’t really get it from places. Even as simple as we got new phones this summer because the trade-in deal was too good not to get a good deal on a phone. And they got lost in Berkeley? Where packages go to die. Berkeley, Missouri. Which I think is like that big industrial park up there by the river. I don’t actually know where Berkeley is. Somewhere in this big city.

But FedEx wouldn’t help, which is weird, because usually FedEx is like the, “We’re fast and have white trucks.” But that doesn’t really matter to FedEx. But the phones got lost. And so we hop on and we talked to AT&T. We talked to AT&T at least 5 or 6 times. We talked to FedEx. I say we; sometimes it was mom, sometimes it was me. And it was a mess. No one could really give you an answer. And you’re like, “Guys, phones are really expensive and there’s 3 of them in that box. Like, what are you?” And they’re like, “Well, you’ll have to call us back in a few days and we’ll look and see and maybe we’ll do something then.”

And you’re like, “Okay,” like it’s so—it’s fine. But also like, we’ve been AT&T customers for like, I don’t know, since like the mid-90s. Like, how much longer can you be a loyal customer? And you just bought expensive phones that locked you in for more years of loyalty, but they don’t give loyalty back anymore. And it’s weird. So then when you actually stumble upon a business that treats their customers with a lot of loyalty, I’m like, “Take my money. I don’t care what you sell.” Like I will be loyal back because you want to be loyal too. But that just proves how much loyalty matters. Loyalty really does. Yeah, Terry.

And it just keeps spinning. I read about a school the other day in Texas called Alpha School, and it’s an AI-based school. And they still have teachers, but they’re not called teachers. They’re like… kind of like project manager guide kind of role. And they’re managing the kids’ learning in a different way. But the kids will do—they kind of lock in for deep learning for 2 or 3 hours a day, depending on their age. And then the rest of the day, they’re doing athletics or drama or music. They’re doing something tactile. But they spend a couple hours in deep learning mode that’s trained through AI.

So it’s very self-guided. And I was reading all about this and I thought, at first I thought, “Wow, that’s terrifying for my job prospects.” And then the other hand, I was like, “Hang on, like they still have people working there, but they’re doing something different.” And then I kind of backed up and I was like, you know, in the end, that still requires curious kids. Because a disengaged kid—it doesn’t matter if they’re using a computer and AI to like pivot. Because I think the idea was like, they’re learning and the computer is guiding the learning based upon where they’re thriving or struggling, and it kind of takes a pivot and reframes questions.

Anyway, it’s interesting, but I was like, you know, I would say half of my classes would be, like, really great at that, and the other half would still sit there and be like, “Oh, this is stupid.” I mean, they would, like, because they’re still kids. Like, half of them are engaged, half of them aren’t engaged. I read a article last night that the University of Michigan is doing away with letter grades for freshmen to reduce stress on incoming freshmen. And I’m like, how long do we have to make these people?

Even when Carrie worked at Mopap 10 years ago, she would have kids’ parents email and be like, “Ooh, they’ve been not feeling well lately. Can you excuse them or meet with them privately?” And she was like, “I have, like, this kid is a junior in college. Like, are you going to go to their 1st job interview? Do you still tuck them in at night?” And some, yes. It’s crazy. Like, I can’t even fathom.

I’ve had, so with my entrepreneurship classes, the marketing and the coffee one, I always have parents email like, “My kid is on the wait list and I don’t understand. Do you know that we own 3 companies in St. Louis? They have always been interested in business.” And I’m like, the very fact that you emailed me and the kid has never come to speak to me just solidified that they’re not on the wait list anymore. Like FYI. And I don’t mean they made it off the wait list into the class. You’re just off the wait list. It’s just bunkers. All they do is coach their kid to go do the right thing. My mom and dad might have beat the tar to me to go talk to adults, but it worked. It’s a true story. Did she say no? You guys were always like, “Go and talk, go and say…” I just want to stand in the corner. I still want to stand in the corner, but at least I can talk. I love standing in the corner. Oh, it’s okay.

So we see this beautiful moment unfold. And it’s amazing because it points us to the gospel. Like it had to have been such a Holy Spirit inspired moment for Ruth to say these things to Naomi. It’s beautiful. Like, “I will never leave you. I will go where you go.” It reminds me a little bit of the passages in Exodus and Leviticus and Deuteronomy where God talks about like, “I will be their God and they will be my people.” Like it reminds me of that. Like neat, loyal connectedness, which I guess also reminds me of Jeremiah, because you see that, too, of, like, when the restoration comes after the exile.

Because Jeremiah, if you remember, is, like, prophesying all the horribly hard things that are going to happen and being taken into exile and everything being destroyed and people dying and farms being destroyed and walls burning and all this stuff. I don’t know, catastrophe. But then in the end it’s like, “But I will bring my people back and I will be there.” And it’s beautiful. Like you read it and you can’t help but get like a little giddy.

And I feel that here when I see Ruth as it’s this foreshadowing to: God is not abandoning us forever. We might feel like it, like Ruth does. And surely, I’m sorry, like Naomi and surely also Ruth. But it’s not a forever thing. Because in a sovereign view of God, we have hope, not the vending machine struggle. So Ruth is speaking beautifully from her heart to her mother-in-law.

And there’s a question on 114. It says, how can loyalty be a way to view God’s provision and protection? I think Terry said it right before. Faithful friends are often the balm that we need. Faithful friends are the balm we need. In a lot of ways, Ruth is almost acting as a shield for Naomi’s struggle. Naomi is so close to just dissolving into a puddle of bitterness. And Ruth is the little nudge or shield or hedge of protection that’s like, “I’m going to take care of us. I want to go work in the field. I’m going to go with you.” It’s not abandoning her. It’s saying, “I’m going to physically walk alongside you.”

And I believe this goes back to that idea of we underestimate what an act of grace it is to just be loyal and loving to friends in hard seasons. We think we have to do something really big. Sometimes it’s the ordinary faithfulness that matters more. It’s the someone showing up with a meal. It’s someone, you know, there was a friend shortly after. Oh gosh, I’m remembering the timeline. Fire happens. We work moms for a few weeks. We move into tower house. And I think within like 3 weeks of moving into the tower house, I had that. I had my 1st surgery. Yeah, I had my 1st or 3rd ear tumor surgery, which was a little overwhelming but it’s already scheduled and needed to happen.

And 1 of the teachers at Clara school is like, “I’ve got the kids, we’re good,” and then another teacher I used to teach with whose husband is a pastor out in Wildwood—I think she came to get the kids 1 day just because it’s like we can do this, you don’t need all the things that matters like in that moment. It’s simple; it doesn’t necessarily feel like a big deal, but that kind of love and loyalty is the thing that often is the balm that people need. It’s an incredible thing to get.

So before we run out of time, let’s go ahead and read the last little bit. I love it so much. So we’re going to skip to verse 5 of chapter 2. It’s now Boaz comes into the story. Next week is much more Boaz-heavy than this week. But Boaz does enter the story. So let’s see. Verse 5.

Okay. So Boaz asked his servant who was in charge of the servants—I’m sorry, harvesters—”Whose young woman is this?” The servant answered, “She is the young Moabite woman who returned with Naomi from the territory of Moab. And she asked, ‘Will you let me gather fallen grain among the bundles behind the harvesters?’ And she came and has been on her feet since early morning, except she rested a little in the shelter.”

And then Boaz said to Ruth, “Listen, my daughter, don’t go and gather grain in another field and don’t leave this one, but stay here close to my female servants. See which field they are harvesting and follow them. Haven’t I ordered the young men not to touch you? When you’re thirsty, go and drink from the jars the young men unfilled.” She fell face down, bowed to the ground and said, “Why have I found favor with you that you notice me although I’m a foreigner?” And Boaz answered her, “Everything you have done for your mother-in-law since your husband’s death has been fully reported to me. How you left your father and mother and your native land, how you came to a people you didn’t previously know. May the Lord reward you for what you have done, and may you receive a full reward from the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge.”

That’s amazing. Not only is Boaz so noble in his character, but yet he’s inquired about her. He’s learned her story. And rather than just saying, “Oh, poor thing,” his reaction is, “Wow. She’s really loyal and faithful to Naomi. She is a blessing to many.” In verse 3, we didn’t read that one, but it says, “She departed and went and gleaned after the reapers; she happened to come to the portion.” That was God’s plan all along.

I made a list. Oh, I’m not going to steal my list yet. I made a list. Never mind. I’m not going to say anything else. I was excited for my list today. But yes, when you slow down and you start to see God’s provision, it’s unbelievable the millions of tiny ways God provides for us in hardship. We just don’t always see it. We can see it because we have the beauty of pages and words and we can slow down. No doubt in the moment, she didn’t realize that. Of course, she happened upon it. She was new there. She was just trying to provide for her and Naomi to have food.

But it’s incredible. I mean, it makes you genuinely—it should make us aware—how important it is to have a good reputation, to be known for being faithful, for being trustworthy, for being gracious. That matters. In verse 1, it says, “And Naomi had a kinsman, a husband.” Christ is our kinsman. Yep. It’s such a cool concept, this idea. And it comes up even more next week of this kinsman redeemer idea. This is neat.

I kind of fell down the rabbit hole yesterday of how cool it is that not only is there an idea of a kinsman redeemer in Hebrew culture, but also that the very fields were purposefully not—like we’re so efficient as Americans. It’s like we’ll build a fancier, more million-dollar tractor to not waste 1 little row of grain. But they purposefully did not harvest the entire field. They left the outer edges so that way the poor among them—and it wasn’t just giving them something. It was like, “This is available. You can come and glean from the edges of the field.” Yeah. But it gives them dignity. And that’s the beauty of this. Because these people are made in God’s image, the very structure of their harvest culture provided for the needy among them with dignity, which is awesome. It’s so neat.

I mean, it’s… we could fall down the rabbit hole of politics for a while. But that’s what was neat when I look at all the stuff the Civilian Conservation Corps built in the 30s. And I know there’s pros and cons of the money that went where. But it gave people jobs with dignity. Like dads could go get a job and build cool stone bridges and provide for their family without having to beg. That was a really big deal, which society has pretty much done away with. They just sit at home and… and collect, yep. And everyone knows, deep down, there’s no dignity in it. It’s this kind of like, you know, “Woe is me.”

Every year we used to go to South Dakota to Dakota Sunshine. You would go to the different villages on the reservation. They’re sad because it’s just everything they own is a hand-me-down. And not only, it’s double: “Here’s money, here’s a house. It’s not great, but here it is.” But also, go live out in the middle of nowhere away from other people. Like it’s this double whammy of like there’s just no dignity. And this was beautiful in that sense of their world provided a little dignity for the broken and hurting among them. And that’s really cool.

That said, we have to keep moving because we’ve got 5 minutes. Okay. We’re going to come back to this idea of provision. Provision. Here at the end, there’s a lot of really neat things. Like Ruth is totally blown away by Boaz’s kindness. She doesn’t know who Boaz is. Like up until she goes home and talks to Naomi, she does not have any context for who Boaz is besides he’s not mean and he’s generous. Like that’s all she’s got. So she is blown away by this, and he is blown away by her character because she’s been so faithful to Naomi. It’s very, very cool.

So when we look at this—this is kind of skipping ahead, but we’re short on time. Gosh. I have to ask this question first: How does God’s faithfulness reshape our view of trouble, loss, turmoil, pain, suffering? How does God’s faithfulness reshape that?

Oh, yeah. It is. It’s 1 of Paul’s letters. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He’s saying that he’s building character, which that character will lead to perseverance. And it’s a whole string of things, but a lot of people don’t see that. They just see that “I’m a good person, and I’ve done this, and now he let this happen to me.” There’s a reason. Yeah. Yeah, you have to keep walking in it to understand.

And I think that’s the beauty of this is like, how does God’s faithfulness reshape our view of loss? Well, if we allow it to build a wall and anger and bitterness to take over, it reshapes our view of loss as this unfair, evil hardship. If we keep walking in faithfulness like Ruth walked with Naomi, it slowly reshapes us to understand God’s not done, that this isn’t the end of the story.

So it’s a cool story for a lot of reasons, but it also teaches us about trusting God’s timing. We’re bad at that. Like I was annoyed that our phones took an extra week. I wasn’t even sure I wanted a new phone because I just knew things are always annoying. I don’t know why. I’m just like, I’m like a little bit of a like, but I like my phone, but my phone keeps dying, but I don’t want a new one, but I probably do. It’s just dumb. Nevertheless, I’m not, we’re not good at waiting, but we have to trust God’s timing because we just don’t know. It’s so hard.

But here’s what I—okay. All right, we got this. I wrote a few things down because it dawned on me something kind of cool. So faithfulness very much reframes our trouble within the context of what we’re going through. So whatever the trouble is, faithfulness helps us understand that it’s not the final story. It kind of changes it from like “God is against me” to “God is not finished yet.”

You know how you hear it sometimes like we talk about marketing, reframing things. No one goes to the grocery store and buys 10% fat turkey. No one does that. That’s a weird—they go to the store and they buy like 97% fat-free turkey. Like they buy the, like, because you frame it the way that’s not—no one says like, “Gosh, there’s a, you know, 3 in 10 chance that if you smoke, you’re good.” They always say there’s a 7 in 10 chance you will develop—I forget which one it’s called. Does anyone know? They frame it in a way that makes sense. It’s a simple twist.

I wish I was better at this in life, but I don’t have to live in the mentality of “God’s against me” because when I look at God’s faithfulness, I can go, “God’s not finished yet.” It’s a simple twist, but it makes all the difference in the world. Oftentimes, loss or trouble or frustration or disappointment feels like I have loss, subtraction, like something has been taken from me. Okay. But in Ruth’s story, look what it allows for. Like it is subtraction, but that subtraction leads to beautiful redemption, which we know the end of the story, but we’ll get there next week. So we have to think about it this way: God is carrying me through something I don’t understand yet. I am going through something I don’t understand.

And here’s my list that I said I would talk about before. These I thought, I wrote down: subtle, ordinary, miraculous faithfulness. So 1—I did not write them in order, so go figure—Ruth 2.3: Ruth left and entered the field to gather grain behind the harvesters. She happened to be in the portion of the field belonging to Boaz, who was from Elimelech’s family. That was the 1 that Terry said before. She happened to be in that field.

Ruth 2.12 is… “May the Lord reward you for what you have done, and may you receive a full reward from the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to for refuge.”

Ruth 1.22: So Naomi came back from the territory of Moab with her daughter-in-law, Ruth the Moabitess. They arrived in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest. Not after, not months before, at the beginning of the barley harvest.

And then verse 1.6 says, “She and her daughter-in-law set out to return from the territory of Moab because she had heard in Moab that the Lord had paid attention to his people’s need by providing them food.”

Those are really easy moments to gloss over because it’s just narrative. It’s part of the story. But when we slow down and we look at those moments, that’s at least 4 that I came up with. There’s probably more. But that’s 4 in the first 2 chapters of God’s ordinary, subtle faithfulness. We don’t see that in the midst of the hard things. I don’t know how everything will work out. I know the fire changed our lives. Like, I know it did. How could it not?

I can at least see now, in a weird way, Jack, as you all know, had so many hard days before the fire. And post-fire, Jack is a different kid. Like, and I know that’s the Lord working in his life, but I also know, like, things change us and God uses hard circumstances to help us trust him more. So we don’t know the end, but we know that God’s faithful, and we have to genuinely start to trust that God’s carrying us through things that we just don’t understand yet and keep walking.

Okay, I’m sorry. We went over 1 minute. Okay, let’s pray. Father God, thank you for Ruth’s story. Thank you for Naomi’s story. Thank you for the bitterness and struggle of Naomi. Thank you for the faithfulness and love of Ruth. Thank you for giving us the contrast of the 2 of them. Thank you for helping us understand how to walk in sorrow, how to walk in frustration and disappointment and pain and hurt and disappointment. Thank you for an example of how to love people well and to see the gift of grace it is to just be loyal and faithful.

So God, help us to understand these things. Help us to hold fast to the idea that you are not done yet. When we are living in these seasons that you are not finished. It is not that you’ve turned against us. It’s that you are still writing a story. Help us to live in the hope and redemption of that place. God, thank you for our class and thank you for what you do for us. We ask all this in your name. Amen.

Alright, next week we wrap up, which is really sad. I always get kind of lamentful whenever we get to the end of a quarterly. Usually the cover of mine is falling off and it’s all broken, but I’m still sad when it’s over. Yeah.