Ruth The Glue of Family

Ruth

The Glue of Family

Video Credit. Levitt.tv

“A family is more than the sum of its parts,” says Kay Shurden.  “It is a living, shaping, powerful unit that teaches us our most important lesson in life.  It teaches us who we are, how to act, whom to relate to, and what is important in life.”

Name: “Friendship”

Date:  11^th Century BC.

Identification:  Moabites widow, who married Boaz, became David’s ancestors.

Story Line:  Ruth refused to break up her family, God rewarded her.

Read it in the Bible:  Ruth 1:1-18; 4:9-22.

Elimelech took his family—wife, Naomi, and sons, Mahlon and Chilion,—to Moab because of a severe famine in Bethlehem.  There his sons married Moabite girls Ruth and Orpah.  Then Elimelech and his sons died, and three widows were traumatized.  Naomi wanted to return to Bethlehem, but Orpah opted to stay in Moab.  That produced one of the strangest families ever—Naomi and Ruth, a Jewish mother-in-law and a foreign daughter-in-law. 

Their prospects for success were dismal, but they were a family and refused to be torn apart.  When Naomi suggested Ruth remain in Moab too, Ruth replied, “Entreat me not to leave you… for wherever you go I will go, and wherever you lodge,  I will lodge….” (Ruth 1:16).  There was no turning back.  They would face the future together.

Families need each other.  We learn from each other.  We are glued with a kind of super glue that enables us to stick together to find solutions to family challenges.

If you have family members counting on you, don’t see that as an obstacle; see it an opportunity to minister to the people who need you most, and will appreciate you most—your family.  God never created anything more precious than a family.  As Rudyard Kipling wrote: “No person is ever alone who is a member of a family.”

                                               Myles and Katharine Weiss