What the Lord Does

by: Michael Wilcock

Although it is a true story that the book of Ruth tells, we could imagine it as a drama, with a cast of nine principal characters and a chorus of the townspeople of Bethlehem. The play shows us both the things that they do and the things that happen to them: their sufferings and hopes and frustrations and plans. Certainly they often mention the Lord, but it seems to be they, not he, who keep the action going. Only twice does the writer actually say that the Lord himself takes a hand and does something. Near the beginning, he gives the starving Bethlehemites food (1:6); here near the end, he gives the sorrowing widows a son (4:13). (Yes, they counted the baby as Naomi’s as well as Ruth’s—verse 17!)

That is so true to life, isn’t it? It would seem to the audience that God figures in the drama only as someone talked about by these religious people. He seems, at best, a remote and distant figure. But the “cast” know they have been talking about a real character. He has been there throughout, from beginning to end and at all points between. The plot has been driven by him, not them.