While his kinsmen back home were suffering and hungry, there was food in Moab. At first it seemed as if Elimelech had made the sensible choice. That reality was not immediately apparent, of course. The road to Moab turned out to be the road to nowhere. Alternatively, he could leave the Promised Land behind in search of greener fields, in this case the fields of Moab, where food was more abundant. He could stay in Bethlehem, the empty breadbasket of Judah, mourning the sin that surrounded him and trusting God to provide for him. In that situation, Elimelech had a choice to make, a road to choose. The ultimate irony had occurred: Bethlehem, whose very name means “House of Bread,” was a place of no food. Unfaithfulness to God had once again resulted in a famine in the land. It was in these difficult days that a man moved his family out of Israel (v.2). 17-21) stand outside this downward spiral and show us in graphic detail a nation that had comprehensively lost its way, becoming every bit as bad as the pagan nations that were previous inhabitants of the Promised Land.
The final chapters of the Book of Judges (Judg. Finally, at the end of each cycle, the Lord sent a deliverer to rescue His people, and they experienced some measure of rest. Later on, in the Book of Judges, though, this step of repentance is missing. At least they did this the first few times they passed through the cycle. Then the people repented and cried out to the Lord. Next, God acted in judgment against them. At the beginning of each cycle, God’s people rebelled against Him and sinned. There is a repeated cycle (or, more precisely, a downward spiral) of events in the Book of Judges. During the days of the judges, everyone did as seemed best in his own eyes, for there was no king in the land (Judg. It is a theological description of the character of the times in which these events take place. The Book of Ruth starts with a description of the times in which the events took place (v. Ultimately, for Christians, the grace of God is always the defining element of our lives. But it is always there, whether acknowledged or unacknowledged. That grace is not always evident to the players in the game at the time. It is the grace of God, which directs the outcomes of those decisions and events according to His sovereignty and good purpose for His people. There is a mysterious X-factor that is evident in the Book of Ruth – a variable that has the power to change everything. However, our lives are not simply the consequence of the various decisions we have made and events that have occurred, as if the universe were a giant supercomputer into which we feed all of the variables and come out with a predictable answer. The Book of Ruth shows us that our actions have consequences. Often the consequences are not those we expected and anticipated, but our lives nonetheless bear the mark of the decisions we have made and the defining moments we have faced. It is about the long-term consequences of the decisions we make. The first chapter of the Book of Ruth is the story of choices made and choices seemingly thrust upon people, about roads traveled or left untraveled. But all of us – whether defined by choices we have made or the choices life has made for us – are on a journey through life, a road that is heading toward some destination or other. These too can be defining moments in a life. No one chooses to have a crippling accident or a life-threatening disease with permanent consequences. No one chooses to have her husband die, leaving her a widow with young children. These are the occasions when life gives us no choice at all, but thrusts us willy-nilly down a path that, however well or little traveled, we would never have chosen for ourselves. On the other hand, though, there are also times in life when it seems your destination had chosen you. On the one hand, there are certain times when a person consciously chooses his or her destination.
In every life there are certain defining moments, key crossroads along the way.
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