It’s catching up to me. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to put it off. I’m squinting more than I used to and, while I wish I could say it’s because of the bright sun, it’s not. No, it’s because things further away have somehow managed to get blurrier in recent years. So squinting is an attempt to sharpen my focus in order to see things more clearly. It’s frustrating when things are blurry. When things are blurry they’re out of focus.
When the blurred vision is gradual, it’s often so subtle that a person isn’t aware of how out of focus things have become. We get used to what is blurry. You’ve experienced this if you’ve thought your eyesight was just fine, only to try on someone else’s glasses and find they allowed you to see things much more clearly. You might remember thinking that you don’t need one of those fancy new 4K Ultra super high definition televisions you see walking into the electronics store because the picture on your current television is just fine. But if you saw the two screens right next to each other, you would realize how much you’ve gotten used to a lower-quality picture.
While we could probably get by faking it through a lot of areas in life not realizing how blurry things are, doing so spiritually could have devastating results. So we want to bring our spiritual lives into focus over the next several weeks.
We start by looking at friendship. Much has been made of the rampant loneliness affecting people today, which is rather surprising given that social media and online activity have allowed us to connect to more people than ever before. Nevertheless, we’re isolated. We’re alone. We don’t have as many friends as we used to.
Yet, we all value friendship. We all crave it. When we think of meaningful friendships, we do so in terms of how other people treat us. We assess our friends on the basis of how reliable they are, how quickly they respond, how interested in us they are, how much they share with us, etc.
Do you notice this? Our valuation of friendships is almost entirely based on what others do or don’t do for us (as opposed to a focus on what we do or don’t do for others). Doesn’t this betray how innately self-centered we are? It’s like we view our friendships as if we’re in the HR department and constantly either conducting interviews to hire new friends or doing performance reviews on our current friends to see if they still measure up. Our view of friendship is naturally out of focus. It’s blurry – at least when we compare our view of friendship with God’s view of it and his desire for it.
As we look at Ruth, we start to see things more clearly. We start to see what focused friendship looks like; friendship that seeks first to be friendly rather than to be friended. Why does it matter? Is our goal simply to be more like Ruth as we pursue focused friendship? No, but as we do, our own relationships will blossom and God’s kingdom will bloom.
Stick with that picture for a moment. You don’t have to be a green thumb or a garden guy or gal to appreciate flowers. Even if you don’t fancy yourself the flower type, we can all agree that plants, trees, and flowers that are healthy and blooming with bright colors and fascinating structure and growth liven up a yard or a room in a way that neglected or dying plants cannot. Think about it – have you ever given someone flowers or a plant only to see a downcast expression on their face as a result? Never! Such things cheer and uplift! In the same way, so does focused friendship. So let us pursue focused friendship with the confidence that our own relationships will blossom and God’s kingdom will bloom.
One introductory detail serves to make Ruth’s story stand out: “In the days when the judges ruled…” (v.1). Yes, Ruth’s dedication, her focused friendship which we see in this account, is inspiring in its own right. However, what makes her story pop even more is the backdrop against which it is set.
The “days when the judges ruled” were not Israel’s finest! In fact, the main theme that runs through the time of the judges is Israel’s self-centered rebellious disregard of friendship with the Lord! They repeatedly pursued friendship with the heathen nations around them – which might have been noble on their part if the intent was to turn them to the true God – but it wasn’t! Their pursuit of friendship with the world was based on worldly, godless attraction, the very kind God demanded they avoid as he prepared them for the promised land.
And to shine an even brighter light on Ruth, notice that she wasn’t even an Israelite; she was a Moabite! A quick little refresher on the Moabites: their beginning was “ewwww.” After fleeing from Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot allowed his daughters to get him drunk and then they each slept with him. The oldest daughter’s son was named Moab, from where the Moabites came (Genesis 19:30ff). And if you remember the account of the talking donkey and the king who tried to enlist the help of a prophet to call down curses on Israel – that King Balak was king of Moab (Numbers 22-24). So not only was Ruth not a Jew, but as a Moabite, her family history was less than favorable!
It’s hard not to see the parallels with the Gospel account of the Good Samaritan. The good samaritan was the last individual anyone listening to Jesus would have expected to be the good one! Surely the priest or the levite should have been good! But neither was. Instead it was the Samaritan, degraded inferiors as far as the Jewish people were concerned. God truly goes to great lengths to see that his lessons hit the mark! He allows those who would be considered the least to take the lead in exemplifying who and what we are to be.
Now let us look to Ruth’s example of focused friendship. It starts with Naomi. Ruth’s mother-in-law, Naomi, had lost her husband over a decade ago. Naomi’s two sons had married Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. Then Naomi’s sons both died, leaving Naomi without any male at all in her house, which at that time would have had a devastating impact on how Naomi would be able to get by. With Naomi’s blessing, Orpah left Naomi and returned to her people to make a fresh start re-establish her life. While we don’t take issue with Orpah’s decision to do so, her actions end up showcasing the selflessness of Ruth even more.
Rather than follow suit and make a new beginning for herself as her mother-in-law encouraged her to, Ruth makes a remarkable decision. She opts to put her mother-in-law’s needs – and really her life – ahead of her own. Ruth was such a devoted daughter-in-law that she could only think of Naomi’s needs. That prompted her heart-felt commitment to Naomi: “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 even death separates you and me” (v.16-17).
Through Ruth, God provided for Naomi’s physical needs, but through Ruth’s greater Son, God provided for the spiritual needs of all people. Through Jesus, God provided for eternity. And no, Jesus was not merely another fine example, as Ruth and the Good Samaritan were; he was much more. His focused friendship toward fallen mankind was prompted by agape love, and unconditional love that was determined to do not what was in his own best interest, but what was absolutely necessary for the salvation of souls. His focused friendship meant a willingness to allow his Father forget and abandon him so he could forgive and absolve us. He put our needs before his own. Though again and again Satan tried to entice Jesus with some self-care, that surely just a little bit here and there he could put himself first, Jesus refused. He cared too much about us to put himself first. What focus! What devotion! What love! What friendship!
Do you have any friendships like that? Yes. You have Jesus. But do you treat your relationship with him as you do a dear friend? Do you put him first? Are you eager to spend time with him and hear from his Word what is on his heart and mind? Or… do you treat his friendship like we do so many others, giving attention to them only on the basis of “what have you done for me lately?” The answer for all of us is the same – too often, in too many ways, we don’t treat Jesus like a very good friend in our relationship with him. We don’t even deserve his friendship as a result.
Despite that though, he treats each and every one of us as if we’re his absolute best friend. And he always will. His friendship with us is grace-driven; it’s not based on how we treat him. May I ask a silly question? Do you enjoy knowing that your relationship with Jesus is grace-driven? Does that feel good?
What if someone else was able to first experience that good feeling through your friendship with them? What if you were their first experience with a grace-filled friendship – a friendship not because of what they gave you first or in return, but simply because you cared about them and chose to befriend them no matter what?
Focused friendship sees other people the way Jesus sees us. When our existing relationships are grace-driven and when we look to establish new grace-driven friendships, it’s as if we’re giving out free samples of what a grace-driven friendship with Jesus is like.
Has a free sample ever worked for you? Did you ever decide on that flavor of ice cream because you got to sample it first? Of course! Do you think others might be drawn more to Jesus if they experience more grace-driven friendship from Jesus’ followers, instead of only believing our culture’s negative narrative about Christians and Christianity? If you agree about any of this, then join me in being more focused in friendship – existing friendships and establishing new friendships, with the understanding that our grace-driven friendship with others could very likely make an eternal difference. He may very well be waiting to use your grace-driven friendship with them to ultimately bring others into an eternal grace-driven friendship with him.