From the Pastor’s Pen – By Brian Horrobin
Ah, it’s Valentine’s Day and love is in the air!
Whether or not you get a dozen red roses and a box of chocolates, I want to direct your attention to someone who knew the real essence of committed love.
That person is a young widow named Ruth, who reached out to her bitter and miserable mother-in-law, Naomi, also a widow.
The older woman was lonely and depressed and reacted to the discouraging hand dealt to her by emitting the foul smell of her misery to all around her.
Long before there was a Valentine’s Day, however, she was the target of a different arrow, not Cupid’s, but love’s.
It came from the heart of her precious and caring daughter-in-law, Ruth.
Look at what Ruth told Naomi in the Book of Ruth, chapter 1, verses 16 and 17: “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the LORD do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.”
True love looks past present circumstances and the temptation to consider whether or not the other is worthy and gushes forth anyway in care and compassion.
It always puts the other person first, regardless of any chance of reciprocation.
This is also the love that sent Jesus Christ to the cross of Calvary and it is the love this world desperately needs to see in the lives of those who claim to be followers of the Lord.
If this day is a difficult one for you, because of broken love or loneliness, perhaps it would be a good idea to go on the offensive and reach out to someone today who is a Naomi.
Visit them, call them up, or hey, bring them a box of chocolates!
Someone out there today needs a Ruth whose love is genuine and sweet, and you can do something about it.
Don’t just do it on Valentine’s Day, either.
Such love works wonders every other day of the year, too!
