I was thinking of the Old Testament narrative of Ruth this morning.  Ruth is such a wonderful account of God’s grace and mercy to people who chose to follow Him!  What strikes me about the story of Ruth is how the players in the narrative changed along the way.  Ruth does not go how one would expect it to go!  The follower of the one true God turned her back on Him, and the pagan Moabite woman named Ruth turned from her false idols to worship the one true living God.  What a twist in the story!

I think we learn two very important lessons from these surface-level observations.  First of all, God’s people do not always choose Him.  Naomi was a Hebrew–she was part of God’s chosen people Israel, yet for a period of time she turned her back on God.  She determined that God had only dealt bitterly with her and her response was to even change her name to reflect that!  The lesson here for us is that we need to check our hearts because even though we are God’s children we can still turn from Him.  The second lesson we learn is a lesson from Ruth–God accepts the repentance of anyone!  Anyone can come to God, even a pagan Moabite.  Ruth was the opposite of Naomi.  She was not a Hebrew, and though we are not given all the details, we know that her husband disobeyed the clear command for God’s people to not intermarry.  Yet she became a follower of the one true God of Israel–God forgave her sin and accepted her worship!

What a sober reminder this text gives us alongside a joyful truth–we can all have the tendency to leave God, but no matter how far we have gone, we can always come back!  I hope you will celebrate the wonderful, forgiving character of our God today!