Our Daily Bread

 “A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ: …Boaz was the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth.”  Matthew 1:1&5

Ruth arrived in Bethlehem as a young, immigrant widow bringing nothing but a broken heart and a bitter mother-in-law. The hopes and dreams of both women had been buried with their husbands in the nearby country of Moab, and the future was bleak and blurry. Knowing times would be tough, Naomi had urged Ruth to stay in her homeland and rebuild her life, but the loyal girl had committed herself to her mother-in-law and to her mother-in-law’s God.  “Where you go I will go. Where you stay I will stay. Your people will by my people and your God, my God”(Ruth 1:16).

But when they got there, the cupboard was bare, so Ruth headed to the grain fields to pick up leftover stalks for supper. By heavenly happenstance, she ended up in a barley field owned by Boaz, a close relative in Naomi’s family, and it didn’t take long for the new girl to get noticed. “Stay in my fields and share my lunch,” Boaz invited Ruth. “Leave her alone and let her have extra grain,” he instructed the harvesters. 

During the next few months, Boaz saw Ruth’s hard work and she saw his kind heart, and (though I don’t recommend this tactic to my three daughters) one evening in a daring move of womanly wisdom, Ruth slipped into the barn where Boaz was sleeping and made a midnight marriage proposal requesting protection and provision.  As a sleepy Boaz became aware of what she was asking, he surely recalled what he had said only weeks before: “Ah, Ruth, may you be richly rewarded by the Lord, under whose wings you have come to take refuge"(Ruth 2: 12).

Boaz proclaimed his desire to be her husband and conducted some clever business to take Ruth home as his bride. God soon added to their blessings a bouncy baby boy named Obed who grew up and had a son named Jesse who grew up and had a son named David—the David God moved from the pasture to the palace.  And so hanging  high on the family tree of God Incarnate, we find Ruth, a destitute and despairing widow, a foreigner far from home in need of a family, becoming the grandmother of the greatest king of Israel and an ancestor of the King of Kings.

“Take refuge. Seek shelter. Come find what you need.”  The poor come pleading and the needy come knocking, and Ruth was both.  She brought nothing to the table but needed everything on it, and Boaz was the one who could provide.  He was a “kinsman redeemer,” one who could care for the broken and the begging, so he opened his heart and spread out his hands to welcome her home. Is it any wonder this happened in Bethlehem, the city whose name means “house of bread,” for in that same town on the first Christmas night, the only One who can fully redeem the broken and the begging, the only One who can forever fill empty hearts and hungry souls, came to us as the Bread of Life. This Christmas, let’s stop scrounging for supplies and living off leftovers for we have a Redeemer who opened His heart and spread out His hands so He could welcome us home.

We bring nothing to the table but need everything on it, and Bethlehem’s Babe is our Bread of Life.