Crazy Love

Ruth: diligent, dutiful, submissive and sweet.

Hmm. That’s the Ruth I used to know, before I spent some time with her. And it’s true that she is all those things. She is known for her diligence in work and family, her dutiful love for Naomi, and her submissive posture to Boaz, who eventually becomes her husband.

That’s sweet and all, but just not all that…inspiring. I get inspired by purpose and passion, by a pioneering spirit and a caution-ignoring heart. And Ruth is also all of THOSE things.

Ruth, Naomi and Boaz are pictures of gospel love…love that ignores the sensible and chooses the daring. Here’s some ways I think they did that for one another:

Naomi and Ruth:
When Naomi sensibly urged her daughters-in-law to not cling to her, but return home to their mothers and search for new husbands, Orpah saw the sense in that request. But Ruth chose Naomi. She chose crazy love, love that promotes the other’s best interest instead of her own. In doing so, Ruth sparked hope in Naomi. Two widows, clinging to survival, set off together, their pain behind them, a daunting future ahead.

As women, we need to look for the unlikely and unconventional friendships that God can use to change us. Whether in the position of older or younger, church-going since the cradle or spiritually seeking, women learn from one another. Oftentimes it’s in the pouring out to another that God teaches us the most. Naomi reminds us that circumstances do not prevent us from spurring one another onto God. In her darkest moment of personal faith, Naomi elicited a conversion from a pagan-following foreigner:
“But Ruth replied, "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.”

Ruth and Boaz:
When Boaz noticed Ruth’s work ethic and diligence in the fields, he approached her to offer further kindness. Boaz was a man interested in not only following God’s rules, but God’s heart.

Ruth’s winsome way was not in word, but in action. Her virtue preceded her, and her continued presence spurred Boaz on to either greater things. And greater things would be required—at the urging of this very woman!

Naomi’s streak of crazy love continued when she hatched a plan to get Ruth taken care of. Notably in the text, Naomi urges Ruth to go to Boaz so she could be provided for. Instead of choosing to enact the levirate law of marriage with Boaz, which would provide for both Naomi and Ruth, Naomi again chooses the crazy love option: worrying about Ruth’s standing, not her own. Again, she chooses the riskier option, planning for Ruth out of love, not fear. But God had other plans.

When Ruth showed up on the threshing floor, perfumed and pretty, she threw Naomi’s plan to the wind and decided to risk it all on one man’s character. Rather than proposing marriage, Ruth proposes a promise: make good on his standing as their kinsmen-redeemer. At the risk of her own protection and safety, Ruth responds to Naomi’s crazy love with a move of her own. She could have chose the sensible option: she’s young, of marriageable age, and had already proved her strength as a woman. But this Ruth, this sweet and spunky gal, won’t break a promise she made to her unlikely companion—her mother-in-law.

1 Peter 1:22 says that as believers, we should “love one another deeply, from the heart.” Another translation uses the word intense to describe this word, and the translation from the greek describes this word as “to be stretched thin.”

Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz embodied this deep, intense, stretched-thin love in the way they treated one another. With every trial, with every opportunity to make the sensible choice, they chose a crazy kind of love, the kind that promotes the other person even at great personal cost.

When Naomi cradled her grandson to her chest, the result of Ruth and Boaz’s marriage, I wonder if her mind flashed back to the many times she choose risk over safety. Love over fear. The result? An outcome even greater than she could have imagined. Naomi was restored, with an heir to claim her family’s land, a grandson to carry on the family line, and a daughter-in-law “worth more than seven sons.”

Generations later, another baby boy is born. He comes from this family line and the love of Naomi, Ruth and Boaz. He is Jesus, and he came to earth to embody this kind of crazy love that God already has for you.

Jesus is called our redeemer, but unlike Boaz, he doesn’t need your proposal, because he’s already offered it to you. He is our protector, our provider, and our healer from our former way of life. When we accept his redemption, we choose crazy, self-dying love as our response to his love for us.

This week, consider if you need to invite Jesus to be your redeemer. Ask yourself if you are equipped to love someone close to you with intense, stretch-yourself-thin kind of love. If you’ve been offering a different kind of love, one that comes from your own stash--one that is mixed with fear, pride, ambition or envy, ask Jesus to fill you with crazy love. His kind of love. And prepare for an amazing change—in you.

To listen to Nicole’s teaching from Ruth 2-4, click here.