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| Photo by Forest & Kim Starr 2008 |
Have you ever noticed how God provides exactly what you
need, exactly when you need it? As I have described previously, my grandmother
Baba endured many hardships and trials, but God was faithful in caring for His
daughter, giving Baba blessings and opportunities she could not have begun to
imagine.
Just as in the example of Ruth, for whom God provided
through His servant Boaz, near-kinsman of Ruth’s mother-in-law Naomi, God
arranged for handfuls of blessings to fall across Baba’s path. These would
serve to work everything out according to His purpose (Ephesians 2:10; Romans 8:28), which had been
foreordained since the beginning of time (Ephesians
1:4).
These “handfuls of purpose” (Ruth 2:16) represent the visible, tangible clues of His
working in our lives, even though most of His master plan is invisible to us (Isaiah 55:9) until long after we
have gratefully accepted these blessings along the way, and may not even be
fully manifest until we see Him face to face in glory (1 Corinthians 13:12).
For Baba, these blessings included God’s leading her to a
Russian-Ukrainian community in Manhattan’s lower East Side where she could feel
more at home with people of her nationality, language and culture; support from
a loving church family; employment where through hard work she could support
herself and my mother; and the friendship of an older man who offered her a
second job and entrance into the Social Security system.
For Ruth, these “handfuls of purpose” were literally
handfuls of barley that Boaz instructed his men to leave for her as they
harvested, without shooing her away, so that she could glean behind them and
not go home empty-handed. But God does not give us blessings for us to hoard
them, but rather so that we can be a channel through whom blessings flow (Luke 6:38). As our former (late)
pastor used to say, “God will give much more through you than He will to you.”
Through the opportunities God provided for Baba, she was
able not only to support herself and my mother on her very modest income, but
also to give sacrificially to her church, even donating money for the large oil
painting of Ruth gleaning in the fields of Boaz that adorned the church wall.
And Ruth did not work hard just to fill her own belly, but also to feed her
aging mother-in-law Naomi (Ruth 2:17-18).
But this was just the beginning of God’s marvelous
provision. He had led Ruth specifically to the fields of Boaz, an honorable,
God-fearing man who recognized and admired her faithfulness to God and to provide
for her mother-in-law. Like her sister Orpah, Ruth could have been freed from
any responsibility to Naomi once her husband had died. But in contrast to
Orpah, who returned home to her birth family and their pagan worship, Ruth left
behind the false gods of her youth and dedicated herself to Naomi and their
one, true Jehovah God.
When Ruth told Naomi of Boaz’ hospitality to her, Naomi may
have glimpsed the grand plan God was unveiling (Jeremiah 29:11). She praised Boaz for his kindness to them,
and by extension, to his honoring their dead husbands, and she informed Ruth
that Boaz was actually a close relative of hers (Ruth 2:19-20). She counseled Ruth to glean only in the
fields of Boaz, so that he would realize her loyalty to and dependence on Him (Ruth 2:21-23).
As Boaz is an Old Testament foreshadowing of Jesus Christ,
this is a good reminder for His children, who have been saved by our faith (Ephesians 2:8-9) in His death,
burial and resurrection (1 Corinthians
15:1-4) as the only Way to Heaven (John
14:6), to do the same. We should realize that He is the only Source of
all blessings (James 1:17),
and look only to Him to provide; we should be faithful to Him alone; and we
should realize that without Him, we can do nothing (John 15:5).
© 2018 Laurie Collett
