• Respond
• Relieved
• Redeems

In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land, and a man from Bethlehem in Judah, together with his wife and two sons, went to live for a while in the country of Moab. The man’s name was Elimelech, his wife’s name Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Killion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem, Judah. And they went to Moab and lived there. Now Elimelech, Naomi’s husband, died, and she was left with her two sons. They married Moabite women, one named Orpah, and the other Ruth. After they had lived there about ten years, both Mahlon and Killion also died, and Naomi was left without her two sons and her husband. —Ruth 1:1-5

Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you to your mother’s home. May the Lord grand that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.” Then she kissed them and they wept aloud and said to her, “We will go back with you to your people.” But Naomi said, “return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons who could become your husbands? Return home, my daughters.…it is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord’s hand has gone out against me.” —Ruth 1: 8-12, 13b

“Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.” —Ruth 1: 16-17

“Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The Lord has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.” —Ruth 1: 20-21

So Boaz took Ruth and she became his wife. Then he went to her, and the Lord enabled her to conceive, and she gave birth to a son. The women said to Naomi, “Praise be to the Lord, who this day has not left you without a kinsman-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel! He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons has given him birth.” hen Naomi took the child, laid him in her lap and cared for him. The women living there said, “Naomi has a son.” And they named him Obed. —Ruth 4: 13-17a

I heard about his healing, of his cleansing power revealing,
How he made the lame to walk again, and caused the blind to see.
And then I cried, Dear Jesus, come and heal my broken spirit.
And somehow Jesus came and brought to me the victory.

Naomi – “Joy”
Mara – “Bitterness”
Ruth – “Friendship”
Boaz – “Strength”
Obed – “Worship”