It Just So Happened
The seventh book in our Bibles goes by the name “Judges”. That name comes from the rulers, known as judges, that God uses to rescue his people. This seventh book is filled with numerous vignettes in which the same pattern repeats itself. In each story, the people essentially do their own thing with little to no thought for God. In doing so, they create chaos in the land. God responds by sending some form of judgment to awaken His misguided people. This elicits a cry for help to which God in his compassion sends a judge to save the day. Two of the better known judges are Gideon and Samson. My favorite, however, is Ehud. He happens to be left-handed, as am I. I like his story because his left-handedness leads to deception that allows him to assassinate an enemy king. If I have piqued your curiosity, you can read about it in chapter 3. But I digress. Let me highlight again the repeated cycle within the book: man makes Self supreme, God out of his love brings difficulty; man cries out for help, and God rescues. The book of Judges ends with this summary: In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes. An apt but sad (and familiar) summary of what was transpiring in that period of time.
Right after Judges comes the book of Ruth, so named for a character in this four chapter, 85-verse story. Not a long story but a beautiful one, rich with meaning. Ruth begins with these words: In the days when the judges ruled. In other words, the story of Ruth can be dropped smack dab in the middle of the book of Judges. While everyone is living for themselves, ruled by their own desires and thinking, the book of Ruth invites us to consider another way to live. The message of Ruth is this: amidst the chaos of life, the chaos of our own choices and consequences, God is at work. He is on the move. His work is not thwarted, and in fact is moving toward a redemptive conclusion. Ruth’s story is just that, a story of redemption. This is what God longs to do: redeem us from ourselves, from our short-sightedness. This little 4-chapter story invites us to look up from our own myopic existence to consider God, to get caught up in a bigger story than our own.
I have been memorizing the 121st Psalm. It begins with familiar words to most: I lift up my eyes to the hills—from where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. Ruth’s story invites us to get our eyes up, to consider that despite what might be transpiring in our own smaller stories, there is a larger narrative unfolding, one in which we can trust that the Author is good, moving the story along toward a redemptive climax where we will be, in the words of the late Larry Crabb, “deliriously happy”.
There is one detail highlighting this truth in the second chapter to which I want to call our attention. As Ruth goes out to the fields to secure food for her and Naomi, her mother-in-law, here is what we read, depending upon your translation: It happened that Ruth was working in a field that belonged to Boaz. “It turned out…” is how the NIV words it. I wonder if this is the unknown author’s attempt at humor? With a wry smile or a bit of chuckle, the author puts pen to scroll. If a person doesn’t believe in God, or if she doesn’t see Him as intimately involved in the details of her life, she would call this luck or coincidence. But if we acknowledge how man plans his ways but God directs his steps (Prov. 16:9), then we call what happened to Ruth “divine providence.” She just so happened (wink, wink) to end up in Boaz’s field, says the author. It just so happened that Boaz showed up one day while she was working and took notice. It just so happened that Boaz was a distance relative of Naomi’s.
I wonder if as we look back across the landscape of our lives, where we too, could write or say something similar. It just so happened that…I was lab partners my freshman year with a vivacious young lady who would become my wife and be a wonderful companion in our journey toward God. It just so happened that Larry Crabb would call me one day when we had never even spoken. It just so happened that the day my grandson was born, I would run into a man who had been seeking a chaplain for his company. What are the “It just so happened” moments in your life that could cause you to worship, and remind you that God’s good hand is on your life, has been, and will continue to be until you are home? Perhaps part of this story’s purpose is to give us pause to see the good hand of God on us, the God who has promised to never leave us nor forsake us. The story continues on, so let Ruth invite us to link our lives to the eternal Story.