I hurt a guy once. He was one of my
best friends and I pushed him out of my life because he was angry. Granted I’m
summing up a deterioration of a close friendship in a sentence, but essentially
I didn’t know how to handle his anger or his bitterness, so I let him go. I
didn’t really ask why and I didn’t like the reasons he blamed either. He acted
out in anger against me for a little bit and I cut him out. His anger brought me somewhere I didn't want to go.
To this day it’s
one of my biggest regrets.
This past weekend I spoke on the
book of Ruth. Ruth is interesting story because like Jesus’ story doesn’t start
with Jesus, Ruth’s story doesn’t start with Ruth. It starts with Naomi.
Naomi’s husband moves her and her
two sons out into enemy territory because of a famine. Well after a series of
unfortunate events, her husband and two sons die, leaving Naomi and her two
daughter-in-laws to fight and fend for themselves. Her two daughter in laws
names were Orpah and Ruth.
Well they all leave to go back to
Judah and Naomi feels guilty half way through the trip. She turns to them and
asks them to go home. They both shake their hands and say “no way, we’re with
you.” Then Naomi asks again. And Orpah leaves. And they weep.
Ruth continues on the journey and says the famous lines, “where you go, I go, where you stay, I stay.”
Naomi is bitter. Naomi is hurt.
Naomi is pained.
She feels that God is against her.
The three people she cared most about in the world have left her at God’s
doing. And now Orpah her daughter in law leaves her.
She feels that God has taken away
everything she loved.
And the sad part is:
She’s right.
Well mostly.
Except for Ruth.
Except for Ruth.
It’s extremely easy
to separate ourselves from Scripture. It’s easy to brush them off as stories
and not find ourselves in their pages.
For most of
us grace, empathy, pity, and love are hard. If you have it down, God bless you,
but I definitely don’t. I pray for it constantly, but I still struggle with it. I'm assuming Ruth must've struggled with this as well.
The war looks different in the trenches.
Ruth digs
in the trench with Naomi. Ruth says that there is no place too far, even death,
that’s too far to go for Naomi’s sake. Ruth makes Naomi the central focus of
her life. And she does it for no specific reason and it’s certainly nothing
that Naomi has done. It says everything about Ruth and Ruth’s value on Naomi.
The only
way we will know true love is if we dig in and say, “I’m here. No matter what.”
This points
us back to Jesus, Emmanuel. God with us.
Jesus says, "I'll be with you, to the ends of the earth." Even if it’s to hell; to heaven; to the streets in
Calcutta; to mansions in West Palm Beach; to poverty; to wealth; to the LGBTQ
community or to Arizona legislators; to sinners or to saints; to vagabonds; to
wanderers; to murderers; to George Zimmerman; to Trayvon Martin; to my friend I
hurt, or even to me.
Jesus meets us where we’re at for not just the sake of our transformation, but for
the world’s reshaping.
I’ll be the
first one to say it:
Grace is confusing. Grace is messy.
Grace is confusing. Grace is messy.
But it all
comes down to this:
There is nothing you can do to
make God love you less because God’s love has nothing to do with our action,
rather what He has done already.
If you read
that and think immediately of your “sinner” friend and think that I’m
encouraging sinning. Really think about it.
There is nothing you can do to make
God love you less because God’s love has nothing to do with our action, rather
what He has done already.
God’s not
scared away by our mess. God’s not scared away by our sin. God’s not scared
away by our lack of repentance and our wandering. We don’t worship a scared God. God isn’t scared
of grace. We are.
“Where you
go, I go” is a call to die to our selves. It’s a fearless call that demands our
full attention, our full lives. It requires we go all in.
Go all in. Love
abundantly and fully wherever God may take you, not in order to earn God’s love
for you, but to begin to grasp His love for you. To know His love means we must
love. Love God, love your neighbor intimates that to understand God’s love we
must love one another.
May we love as He loved, love, and loves.
God's not done with you yet.
God's not done with you yet.
---
Ben Langevin
Is a student intern, speaker, published
writer and worship leader from Oviedo, FL. As a creative writing major
at UCF (Go Knights!), he enjoys creating, discovering, and cultivating
life giving environments wherever God leads him. Ben is an avid culture
fanatic. His favorite things include Netflix marathons with his
girlfriend Erika, dodgeball with students at youth group, and of course Starbucks. He attends Summit Church and works at University Carillon United Methodist Church.
Connect with him on twitter: Follow @BenLangevin
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