She said, ‘Please let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the harvesters.’ She came into the field and has remained here from morning till now, except for a short rest in the shelter.” – Ruth 2:7
The Book of Ruth tells the story of a Moabite woman giving up everything she has known and moving to another country to live with her mother-in-law, Naomi. Instead of sitting around and doing nothing she decides to go out and work for a living to look after Naomi and herself.
During Ruth’s time, women were expected to get married and have their husbands look after them, Ruth’s husband had died and (most probably) as far as she was concerned, she had no marriage prospects and she needed to become proactive in her life. She trusted God and knew that He would provide but she was also determined not to waste her life. Seeing that she had arrived just in time for the barley harvest, Ruth took the initiative and found a field to work in.
Her hard work and determination caught the eye of Boaz, and he was impressed. Eventually, she married him, and God’s plan continued to unfold.
Like Ruth, many of us are waiting for our Boaz. The problem with some of us is that we sit around hoping and praying that a man will turn up to take care of us. We miss opportunities to develop our careers or to expand our lives because we are fearful of moving away from the place we are in because we think we will miss out on our best chance of finding a husband.
When Ruth gave up her life, she wasn’t thinking about what she would have by staying put and she could have found a husband easily in a place where people already knew her. In fact, finding a husband was probably the last thing on her mind as she was determined to go with Naomi, a woman she had developed a strong bond with. Naomi was more important to her than a husband and Ruth made a life-changing decision to follow her.
Sometimes God wants us to make a life-changing decision and to shift our focus from finding a spouse to something more important. He wants us to make our lives useful and not to waste it by pining and waiting for someone that may never turn up. In today’s world, it is much harder for someone to find us if we are sitting around and doing nothing.
Ruth didn’t just sit there and wait; she got up and did something. Even though in a sense we are waiting for God to work in our lives, He also didn’t put us on this earth to be unproductive and live a life where our happiness depends on us finding a spouse. Our happiness should be in getting out and living the life God wants us to live.
By becoming productive in our lives, we will come to the notice of the one God has planned for us. It may take years or in some cases never but whatever the result, you can rest assured that you won’t be wasting your life away if you are living the life God wants you to live.
Originally published May 2016