Laced With Grace – Christian Devotions

An Ordinary Life

By Linda August 10, 2010 Character, Inspirational, Life

I am just finishing up Kelly Minter’s study on Ruth.  It is a wonderful study.  I am never disappointed when I dig into the Word.  No matter how familiar the story, there is always something new to be “gleaned.”

I don’t know about you, but I love a good love story.  Ruth has all the elements of a perfect one, with the added blessing of the underlying story of redemption.

As I worked through the study, the one thing that kept tugging at my heart was the “ordinariness” of it all and the wonder God can make of the simplest of lives.

Ruth appeared to be  the most ordinary of women.  She married, was widowed, went back to her mother-in-law’s hometown, met a man and got married.  However, there was something quite extraordinary about Ruth.  It was her love and devotion to her mother-in-law and to her God.

She chose to walk away from her own home, where there was every expectation that she could find a husband and get married again, and go with Naomi to a strange land.  More than that, she chose to worship the God that Naomi worshiped. She was making a lifetime commitment.

“But Ruth said, ‘Do not urge me to leave you or turn back from following you; for where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge.  Your people will be my people, and your God, my God.  Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried.  Thus may the Lord do to me, and worse, if anything but death parts you and me.'”

Ruth1:16-17

From that moment on, everything she did honored that commitment.  She went to work in the fields to glean wheat  as a humble servant in order to provide for Naomi.  She worked faithfully day after day.  After meeting Boaz, their kinsman redeemer,  she obediently followed all of Naomi’s instructions.  It is a lovely story with a miraculous ending.  If you’ve never read it, you will find the little book of Ruth in the Old Testament.

Eventually Boaz and Ruth were married.  They had a little boy named Obed.  Obed had a son named Jesse.  Jesse had a son named David.  Yes, that David!  I am so excited over that, I could jump up and down –  for generations down the line there was a son born named Jesus.

Who would have imagined that an ordinary girl would be part of such an extraordinary story.  Ruth could not have known what the future held.  She lived a virtuous life, simply doing what her circumstances demanded of her.  She lived selflessly and graciously, and God blessed her abundantly.

That means so much to me.  When I get discouraged by the “smallness” of my life, by the mundane, monotonous things I do on a daily basis, I can know that as I do them as unto the Lord, He will make something great of them.  Perhaps not great in the eyes of the world, but great in the eyes of the One who really matters.  Who can know what the sum of our small sacrifices will bring to those who come after us?

Blessings,

Linda

picture from Kelly Minter’s website www.livingroomseries.com

8 thoughts on “An Ordinary Life”

  1. Iris

    It is so true that our God can transform an ordinary life to extra-ordinary, if we let Him. I too like the story of Ruth and how her name is found in the family tree of our Lord and Savior 🙂

    Thank you so much for sharing from your heart with us.

  3. Marsha

    Linda, this was an excellent review of an excellent Bible study!

    I love how God uses the simply and ordinary to weave His story for His glory.

    Blessings.