The Strategist and the Servant

Two women, free to go their own way, and yet bound by past relationships. There is a senior and a junior, a strategist and a servant. And they don’t need each other. Or do they?

I suspect that Naomi had something to do with the journey to Moab in the first place. The text doesn’t say so, but she is the strategist, and her husband could see the sense of her concern. “We’ve go to do something drastic to save our family.”

But the best strategists cannot control the future flow of history. How was she to know that her husband and then her two sons would die, leaving her alone with two left-over native daughters-in-law. She purposes to return, alone, but Ruth, the servant - no strategist, but all about relationship - says, “Where you go, I go.”

Ruth could never have moved to Bethlehem alone - no kin; wrong skin; no connection; no plan. Naomi could make no future. Her’s was used up. She was a planner, but without time left for a plan centered on herself to unfold. The events that would transpire needed both of them. Ruth would never have dreamed to go to Boaz’ field and climb under Boaz’ blanket.Naomi could never, on her own, gain the attention and affection of Boaz. It required the humble servant who was winsome and appreciative.

Naomi, the strategist, had thought they should go their separate ways. But she was wrong. They needed one another. And together, the strategist and the servant played their parts, swayed the courts, and won over a heart. They did this together, as different as they were. God puts together some pretty strange combinations.

We know that God needed neither one. Or did He? We know that God is self-sufficient, and that He is complete apart from His creation. But given that He has purposed to do things as He has, He needed a strategist and a servant to produce the great-grandfather of King David, just as, later, he needed a young maiden named Mary to be the vessel through which the Descendant of David would be virgin-born. And somehow, in ways hidden to the minds of men, He needs you, probably in combination with a person unlike yourself, perhaps with someone you don’t understand, maybe even one that frustrates you because they approach life so differently. I don’t know if you are the strategist, or servant, or something else, but we know we don’t accomplish many of God’s purposes alone.