Adventure 6.5 "Where is the Love?"

             We all want to be loved. But in today’s modern world, our view of love seems to have degraded. The media misrepresents physical attractiveness for beauty, and mistakes lust for love. This created the idea that some girls have to wear more on their faces and less on their bodies in order to be desired, and that guys have to look good shirtless and act as though they couldn’t care less about anything, because after all, “nice guys finish last”.
              Okay, that’s a little extreme, but just how far have we come from the olden days where modesty and purity were for the proper ladies, and knightly chivalry was the honor of a gentleman? Our world has placed so much emphasis on what we can get out of love, that we have lost sight of what love actually is. [1 Corinthians 13:4-7] (Mind you, I’m no person to judge, as I myself have fallen prey and conformed to the desires of worldly “beauty”.)

Reading the book of Ruth has reminded me once again the true beauty of love; love aroused through kindness, selfless acts, patience, sacrifice, grace, loyalty, and good works. Ruth was a great model of selflessness in her loyalty and obedience towards Naomi, and Boaz was a great model of kindness and grace to Ruth and his relatives.

With only 4 chapters, the Book of Ruth underlined such great examples of Love – Loyalty (1:16-17), Kindness (2:8-10), Grace (2:15), Redemption (4:9-10) and more. This, is the real beauty of love.

If we could be so in love with God and focused on being obedient to His will, then the selfless love will overflow into your human relationships. Only then, our identities will be strong in Him, and not easily wavered by the trends and whims of the world; and our love will be firmly rooted in the one who IS love.

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Some other interesting things about the book I found in a link J

http://www.biblica.com/niv/study-bible/ruth/

1.     This book, set in the time of the Judges, is such a nice, happy ending, fluffy story in comparison to the rest of the Judges, which was mostly filled with idolatry, unfaithfulness, disunity and foreign oppression.

2.     It is a zoomed in focused story on the private lives of this Israelite family instead of the typical birds’ eye historical view of the Israelites.

3.     Ruth being a Moabite, who later becomes the great grandmother of David and an ancestress of Jesus, exemplifies the truth that salvation comes not from blood or ancestry, but rather through a loving obedience in faith in God’s will.

4.     It also shows kindness and loyalty that is so rarely seen, and almost the perfect love story amidst the dark era of the Judges.

5.     Another cool thing to note throughout the book is how the selfless acts of Ruth and Boaz restores Naomi from emptiness and grief to fullness and love.