Sweetness

Right now I am in a season of just loving Jesus so much! I don’t really know what has brought it on or if this just means I’m growing, but I find myself loving Him so much… just thinking about Jesus when I wake up, when I’m driving, reading, doing the dishes or just whatever. When I have conversations with people, I find myself thinking about Him and sort of talking to Him in the back of my mind. The other day I had a chance to lie down and take a nap and as I was drifting off to sleep, I was looking forward to a time later that evening where I wanted to just curl up with this book on Psalm 23, so I said to Him, “Lord Jesus, I’m gonna go to sleep for a little while, but I can’t wait to hang out with You later on! Okay, see you then!” Look, maybe it’s just a season or a phase and in a couple weeks I’ll come back down to earth, but it’s like something has come over me and I just keep hoping the change is permanent!

But then again maybe I do know what’s come over me… maybe I can put my finger on a change or two. For one thing, last week I read the book of Ruth at the same time as I started reading the book of John; and if you’ve never read those two books together, you’ve simply got to try it! You see, in the book of Ruth, this foreign girl marries into a situation that becomes pretty broken-down and hopeless. All the men in the family died, leaving the women destitute and hopeless with no prospects, when along comes this man who is able to help them and save them and change their whole lives, which he totally does! His name is Boaz and He is such an awesome picture of what Jesus is like for us… the way he swoops down like a superhero of the heart and saves the day!

The thing that struck me when I was reading Ruth was the tender affection and sweetness of Boaz toward Ruth… When she and Naomi arrived back in Judah, they had no money and no food. Ruth went to the grain fields of a relative of her dead husband and gathered the leftover stuff that had been dropped on the ground so that they could have some bread to eat. The field belonged to Boaz and his workers told him Ruth’s story. When he saw Ruth for himself, he liked her. In Ruth chapter 2, He found her and said, “Whenever you are thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars the men have filled.” At lunchtime Boaz found her again and said, “Have some bread and dip it in the wine vinegar.” After lunch, as Ruth got back to work Boaz told his men, “Even if she gathers among the sheaves, don’t embarrass her. Rather, pull out some stalks for her from the bundles and leave them for her to pick up and don’t rebuke her.”

Boaz offered her water for her thirst, bread for her hunger and protected her tender heart right where it was from embarrassment and humiliation. As I was reading this alongside the book of John, I couldn’t stop thinking about Jesus and the way he said to a woman at a well who was down and out, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you Living Water.” I thought about the time He fed five thousand hungry people with a sack lunch and then told them, “I am the Bread of Life. He who comes to me will never go hungry.” And I thought about old Nicodemus who came to Jesus at night because he was afraid to let his friends know how he felt about Jesus, and how Jesus went ahead and met him at night. He didn’t make him face up at high noon at the temple, but met Nicodemus right where he was. When I looked at the tenderness of Boaz alongside the sweetness of the One he represented, I just fell in love all over again. Jesus is the sweetest, the most tender and gentle lover of the wounded and broken heart… what’s not to love!?