Happy final book club week, my friends! I am so glad to have met new friends here.

This last remarkable lady we are going to discuss is Ruth. Not only is Ruth the picture of beauty in her devotion to every person around her, but how she lives her life gives God the space to show her how faithful he is at all times.

When she lived, her life was not so different than what many of us see as we look across our neighborhoods, cities, our country, and our whole world.

People are starving. Some for physical food, and others for the bread of life that Jesus gave us when he died on the cross for our sins.

And God’s crazy plan for our lives is that we go about our business and feed people. Everyone. The easy ones and the difficult. Every single person we come across should receive something from us. Even if it’s just a brush of the Holy Spirit as we spend time in the same room, Jesus should be so alive in us that he is palpable.

Our job is to feed the people.

We look.

We choose.

We say yes.

We love right where we are.

No matter where we are called, we can be encouraged that God has great big plans for what might feel like simple daily life. We get to live intentionally with every job we have.

We see a great example of this in Ruth.

How does Ruth respond to those around her? Did you notice anything in particular? Maybe something you do or something you want to be better at?

I don’t mean to point out the obvious here, but Ruth seems extremely committed to loving those God put around her. This is Ruth’s decree toward loving her mother in law. Can you imagine how she went on to love her husband? Her children? I want to become love like this every day.

She gave up her comfort of home, the familiar of her own biological family and town. She lived in the town where everyone went because they were hungry. We don’t know what her home life was like or how she was raised, but we know she had food and someone to teach her to be kind and really, truly love well.

She didn’t say, “Naomi, I know you are all alone now. You’ve lost everything, but it would hurt too much for me to lose everything, too. Surely you can’t mean for me to abandon my whole life.”

Nor did she say, “I wonder if you have sin you haven’t repented from.”

All she said was, “I give it all. Where ever you go, I will go.”

Most importantly, she didn’t say, “See how well I love you? See me giving up everything?”

Instead she became love. She became totally devoted to caring for Naomi.

May we leave this place a little more like Ruth having learned a little something about true Christian living from each of these remarkable women of the Bible.