Jesus is the Barley Harvest

How can you not love the book of Ruth? This is the small package good things come in. It has everything. Romance, intrigue, drama, history, a possibly loopy mother-in-law.

But perhaps one of the reasons we love Ruth so much is that the characters are so human. Boaz is passed the first flush or youth, and so doesn't approach Ruth when he perhaps would have as a younger man. Ruth is an outsider, who grows from timid farm help to a proposing lover. Perhaps no one's humanity is so raw as Naomi's in the first six verses.

There's no food in Bethlehem, no crops coming though. The city is filled with sin. It's not a place to bring up two young boys. She trusts Elimelech, she loves him. Our God is King, he's always telling her, so maybe the move to Moab won't be that bad. She pushes the worries about where they'll worship, and who the boys will marry to the back of her minds and they pack up and leave the Promised Land.

But it didn't work out. There's food in Moab sure, but not much else. The people are wicked here, in a different way to her friends in Bethlehem. Sure, their religion was pretty empty, but it had a heart. She doesn't know what to make of chemosh, or his rituals or his followers.

And then, Elimelech is sick, and there's no one to help. He dies in her arms as she wipes his brow. There's no going home now, better to make a life of it here, and let the boys marry those Moabite girls they've been talking to. It seemed like things were going to turn out ok, but now she'll never forget that day. The noise, the blood, the screams of the Moabite widows, bent over the broken bodies of their lifeless husbands.

We need Naomi in the Bible because she knows life as we know it. Sometimes life is brutal for no good reason. But more than that, we need Naomi, because of what she hears in verse 6. The rebellion at home is over, the Lord has visited His people and given them food. The rains have come, and crop is growing. There will be a barley harvest, she can glean, she can eat. She's bitter, but she has hope, more than she knows.

And we, like her, have more hope than we know. Jesus is the barley harvest. Jesus is the sweet good news from a far country. Jesus is our hope. Jesus who was plunged into a brutality more focused and less deserved than we'll ever know, and came out the other side. Jesus is the hope humming along in the background while the noise of the world tries to drown Him out. Because Jesus lives, so will we, because Jesus lives, we can face tomorrow. Jesus is the anvil, His enemies the hammer, smashing themselves to ruin.

Jesus is the promise of good, and the promise of better to come.
Jesus is the good. Jesus is the better to come.
Jesus is the barley harvest who draws us home. Come to Him.