(June 8, 2020) From Ruth 1:19 “So the two of them went on until they came to Bethlehem.” So Naomi finally returns to Bethlehem. It has been so long and so much has happened that you might imagine how much talk was going around that small town. “Naomi is back!” But Naomi responds: Do not [...]
( June 3, 2020) From Ruth 1:16-18 “…Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.... May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.” And when Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more.” Sometimes we resist [...]
(June 2, 2020) From Ruth 1:16 “…For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God...” Yesterday Naomi offers her two daughters-in-law a gift: the freedom to remain. Orpah accepts it; Ruth doesn’t. …But why the difference? It is easy to understand [...]
(June 1, 2020) From Ruth 1:8 “But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, ‘Go, return each of you to her mother's house. May the Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me.’” Naomi finally returns home because the famine is over and God has visited His people (1:6). [...]
(May 27, 2020) Ruth 1:7 “With her two daughters-in-law she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah.” There is far too much to Moab for just one day. When Naomi’s husband died she was “left with her two [...]
(May 26, 2020) Ruth 1:4 “They married Moabite women, one named Orpah and the other Ruth.” As we read Ruth, one fact is inescapably clear: Ruth was a Moabite. The history of the origin of the Moabites is colorful. Genesis 19:30-38 tells us the story: simply put, Abraham’s nephew Lot lived in a cave with his [...]
(May 22, 2020) Ruth 1:1-5 “…the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. ... But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years, [...]
(May 21, 2020) Ruth 1:3 “But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons.” So here we are in the unsettled times of the Judges, with a famine in Bethlehem. And it is heartbreaking to say that this Jewish family had to leave the Promised Land for a time [...]
(May 20, 2020) Ruth 1:1 “In the days when the judges judged there was a famine in the land, and a man from Bethlehem in Judah went to live for a while in the country of Moab.” I never imagined I would write more than two months of devotionals when I began them! I thought [...]
(May 19, 2020) Jonah 4:11 “And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?” Some of you have remarked to me how much can be gleaned in even a small Book like Jonah. Truly, [...]
