Christian Devotional – April 21, 2017

Finally, in Ruth chapter 2 starting in verse 14 we begin to see the glimmer of a hope again for Naomi. Ruth is still out gleaning grain in the field and all of a sudden things just start seeming to fall into place. She starts to notice there’s a lot of grain left out here for her. There’s a lot of help that she’s receiving. She gets fed. Things just seem to be working out. She goes home and tells Naomi all about her day including everyone that she’s met. I can almost imagine Naomi’s face when she hears the name of the individual who took notice of Ruth. Boaz. She recognizes that what her daughter-in-law brought back in was more than what she could have done all on her own. And when she hears the name of Boaz, she has hope. She knows that this is a close relative and now she even tells Ruth about this close relative and what that means.

Sometimes when we feel hopeless, it’s the small things, the seemingly inconsequential things, that start as having hope again. The coincidences that we can’t explain why any other way other than the fact that God must have taken notice of us and our situation start to have more meaning to us. We get reminded that God sees us and knows us and remembers us. Naomi never would have gotten there on her own without her daughter-in-law Ruth who was there to live out the promise to Naomi. When we feel hopeless, God will always find a way to show himself to us through things that go on around us, circumstantial things that we truly can’t explain it any other way. The question is, are we looking for them and do you recognize them as acts of God when we see them. What are we looking for in our day? Are we seeing the hand of God moving even in small ways each and every day? He is where our hope comes from.