Read Ruth 1:1 and 4:16-17
TORN BY CHRISTMAS
The jingle-filled adverts are on the TV, the kids are practising for their
nativity plays and the coffee chains are pushing over-priced, sugar-laced
drinks in supposedly festive cups. We’re all preparing for Christmas!
But all of that Christmas ‘wrapping’ has a tendency to divide people. We
all have a friend who can’t help telling us how ‘Christmassy’ they’re feeling –
unless that’s you! For most of us, though, the pressure to shed loads of cash,
create the perfect Christmas experience and pretend you’re feeling ‘merry’
24-7 can be more than a little bit overwhelming.
So how are you feeling about preparing for Christmas? For Christians,
there can be the added pressure of feeling we’re the ones who should be the
most gleeful. After all, it’s about Jesus, right?
Whether it’s because this has been an especially tough year, or whether it’s
that you just feel a sense of ‘same old, same old’, preparing for Christmas can
often feel more of a chore than a delight. Yet my hope is that, over this
Advent period, the book of Ruth might be just the kind of preparation for
Christmas we all need.
THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY
Think of Ruth as ‘the story behind the Christmas story’. Although it is set
around a thousand years before Mary and Joseph, we’ll discover there are a
fair few similarities.
For starters, the events of Ruth also take place in Bethlehem (1:1). There’s
also the fact that the story focuses in on seemingly ordinary people going
about their daily lives, as we also see in 1:1. Perhaps more strikingly, like
with Christmas, Ruth reaches its climax in the birth of a precious baby.
But these two stories don’t just have similarities. They share a much deeper
connection…
Read Ruth 4:16–17
Spoiler alert: this is where our story is heading! The baby that arrives at the
end of Ruth is actually no less than the grandfather of Israel’s great king,
David. And, as we’ll discover, this makes him a great, great, great, great…
ancestor of Jesus.
Is this the ending that you’d expect when you first read Ruth 1:1?
PREPARING FOR THE UNEXPECTED
In a way, we can all get very used to Jesus. Of course, there can be something
beautiful about things feeling familiar, perhaps like returning to our
childhood home or watching a favourite film. But however familiar we are
with the Christmas story, and however familiar we might even be with the
story of Ruth, I pray that seeing Ruth as ‘the story behind the story’ might
protect us from an overfamiliarity as we prepare for Christmas.
REFLECTION
Take some time to pray that God would be preparing your heart throughout
this Advent. Even dare to pray that his astounding kindness would be
unexpected to you in these coming days.
Listen to ‘Light of the World’ by Lauren Daigle.
Ham, Robin. Finding Hope Under Bethlehem Skies: An Advent Devotional. 10 Publishing, 2021.