In this third sermon in our series on the Book of Ruth, we see Naomi craft a plan to help Ruth find rest in the home of a loving husband who will protect her and care for her. The plan is a risky one and could easily have been misinterpreted! In fact, many have interpreted Naomi’s plan as risqué and provocative, but it need not be seen as such. It would not be in line with the character of the woman we have come to see in Ruth, or of the “worthy man,” Boaz.

As Christians, we don’t believe in luck. We see the hand of God in the arrangement of circumstances. At the same time, the Bible affirms that we are each free to make choices. There is, of course, a difficult tension in these two ideas, but we hold them together because the Bible holds them together. In the Book of Ruth “there’s a string of ‘just-so-happens’ that would never have happened without human effort and could never have happened without God’s unseen, providential hand working in His ordinary ways” (David Roseberry, “The Ordinary Ways of God”).

You might think of 2020-2021 as “The Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad” years: a Global pandemic, racial tension, political discord, and an insurrection in the Capitol Building. Just when we thought things were getting better, the Delta surge! This is not unlike the situation we read about at the beginning of the Book of Ruth. Today we begin a new sermon series as we meet Naomi and her daughter-in-law, Ruth.