What can love do today?

Always strangers, always expanding, through acts of love and courage; shrinking and quavering under acts of selfish regard. What shall be our tale?

The history of humankind as told in the bible is , among many things, the history of love.  Love as it flows from a source seemingly outside of us, through us, and beyond. There are many stories of peoples joined together by love starting with Adam and Eve; there are many stories of destruction resulting from selfish regard beginning with the slaying of Abel by Cain.

The father-son combination of David and Solomon has lineage built upon love and respect transcending tribal boundaries.  The story of Naomi and Ruth is where it began.  Ruth, the widowed daughter-in-law of Naomi, and of another tribe, so loved her mother-in-law that she left her people to accompany Naomi on Naomi’s return to her own homeland.  There, Ruth was honored by yet another stranger and tribesman and became the wife in an honorable fashion of Boaz.  Their union led to their descendants being none other than David and David’s son Solomon.

The tale begins with selfless love, Ruth’s love and care for her mother-in-law.  As Ruth accompanied Naomi far from her own ancestral lands and tribe, Ruth had no knowledge of what might become of her own life.  How might she be treated amongst strangers as a stranger and an alien in the company of a woman without a husband?  It was only through the kindness of faithful people that her life blossomed once again; faithless people would likely have used her for selfish purposes.  But such was not the case. Ruth was faithful to love; so were people in positions of power and wealth faithful towards her, even though she was a stranger from a strange land.

You might ask:  Why were such stories told repeatedly and eventually written down, and eventually studied and analyzed? Why? Because they are stories of the power of love and the choice to believe in and act with it.  They are stories of what happens when we put our trust in transcendent love without knowing where it will take us. It is the basis for hope even as we are willing ourselves to be people of faith and good intention.

Through Ruth’s union with Boaz arises three generations later the great great grandson named David.  David was a revered leader of Israel and the one who led the sacrificial building of the first great temple. It is David, near the end of his life, who speaks the words that we read in 1 Chronicles 29:13-16. 

13Now therefore, our God, we give You thanks, and we praise Your glorious name. 14But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? For everything comes from You, and from Your own hand we have given to You. 15For we are foreigners and strangers in Your presence, as were all our forefathers. Our days on earth are like a shadow, without hope.

So it is that these words about being strangers have come from a long lineage of faithful treatment of the alien and stranger.  And so may it be once again.  To what are we led? How are we called? What shall we do?

Larry – 1-30-2025