In worship this month, I’d like to think with you about becoming agents of God’s restoration in the world. We will do this by taking a deep dive together into the book of Ruth, a book of just four chapters, yet filled with finely cast sentences and vivid characters. If you haven’t read it, you should.
Ruth is squeezed between Judges and 1 Samuel in the Old Testament and is the sort of story you can read with interest and pleasure in a single sitting, along with a cup of coffee or tea and something to snack on.
The concern of the story is the restoration of Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law, to her home. She is the vulnerable one, the one without a future, being, in the first moments of the story, rendered husband-less and son-less and home-less. Yet, as the story unfolds in four acts, Ruth becomes the agent of Naomi’s restoration to her kin and to her home. That is, Ruth’s actions advance the story and make possible Naomi’s new and restored life.
As we read together, Sunday by Sunday, each of the four chapters which make up this story of Naomi’s restoration through Ruth’s agency, we will ask ourselves how we, too, can be agents of restoration here where we live today.
I hope you will join us each of the Sundays of September as we explore Ruth’s story and discover ways in which her story can inform and shape us.
‘Ruth in the Fields’ by Merle Hugues, 1876
September 3
“When Someone Tells You There Isn’t a Future”
Ruth 1
September 10
“Glean What You Can to Nourish Life”
Ruth 2
September 17
“There Has to Be Some Truth-Telling”
Ruth 3
September 24
“Celebrate God’s Redemption”
Ruth 4
Pastor Robin
