This past Sunday at church, my pastor preached on the book of Ruth in a way I hadn’t heard before. I didn’t know there was a link between stories before Ruth through genealogy and redemption.

It was so good that I didn’t even take notes like I normally do. 🫠

Ruth came from the tribe of Moab, a Moabite by birth. Moab came to be through Lot and Lot’s daughters in a scandalous way. (Genesis 19)

Boaz came to be through the line of Rahab. Rahab was the prostitute from Jericho who was saved, along with her family, because of the spies that were sent by Joshua. (Joshua 2)

So then we get to the book of Ruth and see how these two individuals come together in a set of circumstances that redeems not only Ruth’s situation at that time, but also their whole lines. It’s only explained by God, who from the very beginning, generations before, planned this story of redemption after His people went astray.

What also resonates with me in today’s modern time thinking back to this story in the Bible is how our perspective matters.

Something else?

We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.

Just reading these stories separately, we can definitely see good in them without connecting them. As I’ve done so often, I just read them and you can glean so much from the stories themselves and of the characters.

Having them put together painted a different picture and just brought to light how little we know of our own stories because we only see the past and the present through our own lenses. That perspective has been tarnished by our biases, our assumptions and experiences. Our feelings can manipulate the best attempt at being objective with our outlook.

God sees it all and already has the whole story in book form. He has all the pieces.

I’ve been thinking about that as I navigate this thing called life this week.

We don’t have all the answers. We don’t even know all the pieces that are going to fall into place (and they will because we serve a mighty and faithful God).

Even so, we can rest in the same truth because having all the answers doesn’t necessarily solve all our problems because the point is the journey, not the destination.