The joyful opportunity to love

Huw Williams | 21:21, Saturday 5 May, 2012 | Turin, Italy

I’m just picking up a thread from my blog post last week, where I concluded with the thought “…perhaps it’s time to get back into our Bibles and focus our eyes a bit on the God we truly meet there.”

But what kind of God do we meet in the Bible? It’s all very well suggesting that we don’t always see what God is like very clearly, but what kind of God would we see if we did? I think Ruth 3 helps us with this. I’ve thought for a long time now that Boaz’s words to Ruth at the threshing floor are fascinating. Here is Ruth, asking a kinsman-redeemer to do the costly work of redeeming – of rescuing, protecting, providing for her, of saving her from a long, hard and bleak future. And Boaz tells her that she has shown him a kindness, a greater kindness in fact than what she has shown previously. In what possible sense is Ruth shown Boaz a kindness in asking for his help?

If what we thought about last time is true, that we become like the gods we worship, then couldn’t it be that Boaz is grateful for this opportunity to show his God’s love? Certainly Boaz is delighted to redeem, it is his joy to rescue, it is his pleasure to spread the corner of his garment of protection over this vulnerable and needy woman coming to him to help. If Boaz is becoming like the God he worships, if he shows us in miniature what God is like in all eternity, then doesn’t he show us how joyful and delighted God is to save all who come to Him through His Son, Christ Jesus?

How strange then, that we should be so slow to come to this God for His help, for His provision, for His forgiving welcome, how strange that we would rather try and fix things ourselves.