“May
You Be Richly Rewarded
By The Lord”
Boaz replied, “I’ve been
told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of
your husband—how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to
live with a people you did not know before. May the Lord repay you for what you
have done. May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the
God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.”
“May I continue to find
favor in your eyes, my lord,” she said. “You have put me at ease by speaking
kindly to your servant—though I do not have the standing of one of your
servants.”
At mealtime Boaz said to
her, “Come over here. Have some bread and dip it in the wine vinegar.”
When she sat down with
the harvesters, he offered her some roasted grain. She ate all she wanted and
had some left over. As she got up to glean, Boaz gave orders to his men, “Let
her gather among the sheaves and don’t reprimand her. Even pull out some stalks
for her from the bundles and leave them for her to pick up, and don’t rebuke
her.”
So Ruth gleaned in the
field until evening. Then she threshed the barley she had gathered, and it
amounted to about an ephah. She carried it back to
town, and her mother-in-law saw how much she had gathered. Ruth also brought
out and gave her what she had left over after she had eaten enough.
Her mother-in-law asked
her, “Where did you glean today? Where did you work? Blessed be the man who
took notice of you!”
Then Ruth told her
mother-in-law about the one at whose place she had been working. “The name of
the man I worked with today is Boaz,” she said.
“The Lord bless him!”
Naomi said to her daughter-in-law. “He has not stopped showing his kindness to
the living and the dead.” She added, “That man is our close relative; he is one
of our guardian-redeemers.”
Ruth
2:11-20
Boaz noticed Ruth. Ruth
received a blessing because she was in exactly the right spot, at exactly the
right time.
Sometimes
God uses unexpected encounters to bring unexpected blessings.
Our
Daily Bread – March 10, 2015