Dear Amy,

What is the story of Ruth really about?

In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons.

But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years, and both Mahlon and Chilion died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband.

― Ruth 1:1, 3-5

A family of four nobodies left Bethlehem to live in Moab to escape a famine, and three of them died. The Moabite wives were also nobodies⸺notice that they don’t even merit a mention in the description of Naomi’s desolation.

Naomi tried to send away both daughters-in-law, and Orpah went. Of course she did. There was nothing to be gained by staying with a bitter old woman. By returning to her own family she would be OK.

And so would Ruth, except that she refused to go.

But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the LORD do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.”

― Ruth 1:16-17

What astonishing commitment. Where did that come from? And what is it that this story is actually all about? Here’s what: it is all about kindness, and when kindness meets kindness.

Of course Ruth would have been OK if she had returned to her own family. Her future prospects with Naomi however were much less certain, but there was something that she could see with crystal clarity: Naomi herself was not OK, nor would she be. She had become a bitter old woman blaming the Lord for her own misfortune, and in danger of ending her days in bitterness, misery, and isolation.

Notice that Ruth did not explain her act of kindness to Naomi. How patronising it would have been if she had, if she had admitted that she was staying purely to look after her. Naomi would have been humiliated by this pagan woman. Ruth spared her that. How kind.

And so they returned to Bethlehem where Ruth met Boaz, a kind man with a big heart. He protected and provided for this foreign woman who had no status, who was so vulnerable, because he himself was kind and because he saw her own kindness.

Then she fell on her face, bowing to the ground, and said to him, “Why have I found favour in your eyes, that you should take notice of me, since I am a foreigner?” But Boaz answered her, “All that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband has been fully told to me, and how you left your father and mother and your native land and came to a people that you did not know before.

― Ruth 2:10-11

Boaz knew just how rare and precious was this kindness. He had found someone with a kind heart like his own, albeit a foreigner without status and without prospects, and he cherished her.

Notice just how kind Boaz was himself.

Then Boaz said to Ruth, “Now, listen, my daughter, do not go to glean in another field or leave this one, but keep close to my young women. Let your eyes be on the field that they are reaping, and go after them. Have I not charged the young men not to touch you? And when you are thirsty, go to the vessels and drink what the young men have drawn.”

When she rose to glean, Boaz instructed his young men, saying, “Let her glean even among the sheaves, and do not reproach her. And also pull out some from the bundles for her and leave it for her to glean, and do not rebuke her.”

― Ruth 2:8-9, 15-16

Kindness had met kindness.

Let us not overlook just how vulnerable Ruth was, and how perilous her situation had been until now.

And Naomi said to Ruth, her daughter-in-law, “It is good, my daughter, that you go out with his young women, lest in another field you be assaulted.”

― Ruth 2:22

Assaulted of course means raped. These were cruel times to be vulnerable, to be a stranger in a strange land.

So here we have seen the kindness of Ruth which cared for and rescued Naomi, and the kindness of Boaz which protected and provided for Ruth, which is kindness meeting kindness.

There is in fact a whole next level of kindness in this story which we have not yet touched upon, but I have run out of space, and that will have to wait until next time.

May the Lord himself care for and rescue and protect and provide for you, Amy, with that same kindness we see in Ruth and Boaz! 🙏