Ruth Part 2: How A Little Service Goes a Long Way

2. Ruth: How A Little Service Goes a Long WayBible, Women & Bathrobes Episode 4In today’s episode we talk about Ruth chapter 2 where Ruth goes to glean barley in Boaz’s fields, and how his unexpected kindness is such a blessing to both Ruth and Naomi. We will also share how principles from this chapter apply to us today.Key Talking Points·     What gleaning is with regards to the law of Moses and how that benefits Ruth and Naomi as widows.·     How Boaz shows kindness to Ruth in offering protection in his fields as she gleans, and shows extra kindness to her in offering water and food. When she asks why—he answers because she has been so kind to Naomi (his kinsman’s wife/widow).·     How this story isn’t just about redeeming Ruth & Naomi, it is a story of God redeeming Israel symbolically.·     Following Boaz’ example, we can invite new brothers and sisters in Christ to feel loved, wanted and nourished when they come into our congregations.·     What the Levirate law means for Ruth as a near kinsman.Main Takeaways·     From Heather, “We can be generous in our service…being open hearted [with] your service [because it] is what someone needs…not being stingy, I guess, and being generous.”·     From Bonnie, regarding how much Ruth gleaned, “[It] brings me back to what our Savior has done for us. Right? He gives us extra when we come to Him with a willing heart and just this like little grain of faith. Right? He will magnify our efforts, and he will magnify our whole life and give us so much more than …what we expect.”·     From Bonnie again, “the whole point of the Bible study, is how do we become like Him and become more His disciples? And that's a perfect example of how to be a disciple of Christ is we're giving generously of our abundance.”·     From Tamara, “Often when we're feeling down and discouraged and have gone through something hard, like both Ruth and Naomi have,…we're wondering, Where are the windows of heaven that are supposed to open, right? I've gone through this hard time. Where are they? Where my answers? And God sends people to us that act is His hands. And what a blessing that is to know that others out there who are listening to God.”Invitation from Bonnie“And so for anyone listening out there who's wondering, how can I give back to the Savior? How can I, you know, magnify my calling? How can I make this work? Like think outside the box and ask Him, if you go to Him in prayer and in supplication, and ask how can I serve? Then he'll tell you he wants you to serve his fellow man, right? We are his hands and he will give you the ways and you will be richly blessed in abundance like Ruth was.Heather B. Moore’s BioHeather B. Moore is a USA Today bestselling author of more than ninety publications. Heather writes primarily historical and #herstory fiction about the humanity and heroism of the everyday person. Publishing in a breadth of genres, Heather dives into the hearts and souls of her characters, meshing her love of research with her love of storytelling.Her ancient era historicals and thrillers are written under pen name H.B. Moore. She writes historical women's fiction, romance and inspirational non-fiction under Heather B. Moore, and . . . speculative fiction under Jane Redd. This can all be confusing, so her kids just call her Mom. Heather attended Cairo American College in Egypt and the Anglican School of Jerusalem in Israel. Despite failing her high school AP English exam, Heather persevered and earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Brigham Young University in something other than English.You can find a Heather’s novel about Ruth here.Please join Heather's email list at: HBMoore.com/contact/Website: HBMoore.comInstagram: @authorhbmooreFacebook: Heather B. MooreKeywords#Naomi #Ruth #Boaz #Biblestory #harvest #Redemption #Biblewomen #service #bekind #BibleWomen&Bathrobes #podcastTranscriptTamara Anderson 0:00 After going through a hard time and feeling like you might have been a little abandoned by God, have you ever wondered what the next step is? If you have, we're going to dive into the second part of Ruth today and kind of see what happens after her hardship and watch the beginning of the unfolding of God's redemption for her and see how we can apply it to us so stay tuned.Tamara Anderson 0:28 Welcome to Bible, Women & Bathrobes the podcast where faith meets comfort. Join us Tuesday and Thursday morning. As the gals from Women Warriors of Light and their guests, don bathrobes and dive into the inspiring stories of women in the Bible and the teachings of Jesus Christ. From Esther's bravery to the Sermon on the Mount. We explore it all with warmth, laughter, sisterhood, and maybe even a few sleepy eyed moments. tune in live or at your leisure as we learn lessons from scripture which empower women today.Tamara Anderson 1:09 Welcome to another episode of Bible, Women & Bathrobes. I'm your host Tamara K Anderson. And joining me is my co- host, Bonnie Randall, and we are blessed again, to have Heather B. Moore on. She is a USA Today Best Selling Author of over 90 publications. Oh my word! And we are so excited to have her joining us on this second part of talking about Ruth. Heather wrote an amazing novel about Ruth, we will be sure to link that in the show notes. And if you're wondering where you can find out more about Heather, please check out her website at HBmoore.com. And I will put all her bio in the link if you missed the intro last time. But Heather, thank you for being here with us again this morning.Heather B. Moore 2:01 Thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk about Ruth today and to hear about your insights as well.Tamara Anderson 2:06 Oh, I think we're all excited about this. So last week, we kind of left off with the story of Ruth and Naomi having lost their husbands. They came back to Bethlehem. Ruth is of Moabite descent and had converted and and so she went with her mother in law Naomi back to Bethlehem, which is where Naomi and her family were originally from. And this was done at great, personal sacrifice truth she could have stayed in Moab. And and Naomi encouraged her to do that get remarried, but she says no, I'm gonna go with you. And so we were able to see her love and kindness and dedication not only to Naomi, but to this new religion to her. And that's kind of where we pick up the story here.Tamara Anderson 2:58 Now, because Naomi and Ruth were both widows, they were in a very precarious position. As far as not having a way to sustain themselves. They didn't have a man to protect them. And although they were coming home to to be in the country where Naomi was from, they weren't able to access the land that her husband Elimelech had left behind. And so we'll kind of dive into the story of that part of it too.Tamara Anderson 3:34 But, Heather, I thought I'd start off and let you kind of talk us through the chapter two of Ruth, we start off with, with Ruth going and trying to glean barley in the fields that was time of the barley harvest. Could you talk us through why she had to do that and what gleaning meant.Heather B. Moore 4:00 Yeah, so we read in Ruth, chapter two verse two, it says, And Ruth the Moabites, sorry. And Ruth the Moabitess said unto Naomi, let me now go to the field in glean ears of corn after him in who sight I shall find grace. And she said unto her, go my daughter." So the question becomes, why does Ruth work in the field? And is this kind of a common practice? Is this her only option? So it seems that kind of, kind of, in general, in their culture throughout the land, women usually work you know, in their homes, obviously raising children taking care of their homes, but since with Naomi they don't have children, um, and they're widows, and then men work out in the fields. So there so there are, there are kind of three different times that I've discovered that women do become involved in agriculture, and one is gleaning, which is what Ruth does. One is herding. And we read about that in Genesis. Another is cultivation. And we read about that in the Song of Solomon.Heather B. Moore 5:17 So basically, it just it shows that this isn't something that the average woman does, but women that are more in a destitute need, they will go and glean in the fields. The other thing too, is that so basically field work is usually done by those who are poor, those who are enslaved, those who are desperate to earn a living. In fact, in Deuteronomy 24, we learned that it's, it's one of their laws to help the poor, and that this is the way that they do it, is that they will leave and we learned about this a little bit later, is that they will leave extra I guess, corn or whatever, whatever their their farming, so that those who are coming behind the glean that they have the extra to take home and feed their...