Break Religious Rules Like Ruth
Ruth broke all sorts of cultural norms. One of her transgressions is that she didn’t care that people said that God didn’t want people like her - foreigners - to be part of God’s family. Of course, people had good reason to say that Ruth, born and raised in Moab, shouldn’t be part of God’s family. After all, that’s what the Bible said:
No Ammonite or Moabite or any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord, not even in the tenth generation. - Deuteronomy 23:3
Nevertheless, she persisted. She cared for the poor, she trusted Yahweh, she pursued her dreams, and she broke all sorts of rules. Eventually she married Boaz and had a child who would be King David’s grandfather. The book of Ruth concludes with the inauspicious lines of a genealogy… and yet when we understand Ruth’s role in all of this, we understand that the author of the book (and the Author of The Book!) clearly wanted to give-the-finger, so to speak, to that passage in Deuteronomy:
Boaz the father of Obed, Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David. - Ruth 4:21-22
Plenty of books in the Bible begin with genealogies, but this one ends with it because it’s such an ‘in-your-face’ to the tradition that says that foreigners don’t get to be included in God’s people. In fact, the whole genealogy in Matthew 1 is clearly emphasizing the unorthodox family line of Jesus.
A couple different ways to pray come to mind:
Are you aware of any ‘irregularities’ in your family line? How might God look at those differently than how those stories have been told?
Are there ways you might step out like Ruth today to break a religious mold in order to more closely align with God’s priorities?