Ruth 1:4: God’s Yardstick – Ruth
Discovering Chesed
Friday, January 6, 2023
As we end Christmastide in these opening days of a new year, we look for ways to better see God’s yardstick in our lives, and for ways to leave the world’s yardstick behind.
We visit the story of Ruth and Naomi frequently in our Noontime visits and when we remember what takes place between these two women and Boaz, we understand why. In the U.S. we are moving through a political season when we struggle with a number of yardsticks in an effort to evaluate candidates who ask for our time and money, our fidelity and our vote. This is a good season to remember how Ruth manages to see the world through God’s standard of love rather than the standards of fear, fortune and fame that the world asks us to use.
When we look again at how Ruth embodies the Hebrew concept of chesed, or fidelity rising from commitment, we find once again that through the quiet persistence of a woman considered an object to be owned, God brings us into intimate relationship with our way of measuring, and with God’s own extraordinary yardstick of love.
Enter the word Chesed into the blog search bar and explore. When we spend time with these posts, we begin to better understand this fidelity that not only measures with love, but that overcomes all corruption, death, and violation.
Image from: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/455426581039406261/
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