I recently read a writer’s comments on an unassuming verse in the Old Testament and it made me think.  The passage is Ruth 2:3 which states, “So she (Ruth) went out and began to glean in the fields behind the harvesters.”  If you know the story, you realize that Ruth had come back to Israel with her mother in law Naomi and these two ladies had no means for supporting themselves.  Which leads Ruth to say…I am going out to glean in the fields.  It may not seem like it, but her decision was one of the most significant decisions in the Old Testament.  Gleaning was hard and back breaking work.  There was no glamour involved.  It took a lot of humility to pick up other’s leftovers.  It was good old fashioned manual labor.  But none of that deterred Ruth from deciding I need to go out and glean. 

Because she did, she met Boaz.  They eventually married and the short version of the story is that they had a son who was King David’s grandpa.  Because Ruth decided to to the hard, yet humbling, work of gleaning, the family line of the Messiah was kept alive and Israel’s first great king was born.  This is Father’s Day weekend and I know, Dads, that sometimes being a father seems like hard work with little appreciation.  It is often a bit like gleaning.  I want to encourage you, though, keep at it…keep doing the hard but humbling work of being a Dad…you never know how down the road God will bless that faithfulness in a way that might just change the world!

I was reading through Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.  The Gettysburg Address is one of only a few speeches that people remember.  I have read it many times, but this time one sentence struck me.  “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.”  I’ve been to Gettysburg many times – almost once a year growing up.  I’ve seen the monuments, the bullet-ridden homes, and the fields where men died.  Their acts along with the reasons behind it, and not simply the speeches given, are why we remember Gettysburg and the war that was fought all those years ago. 

I thought of that when it comes to church.  The sermons preached and classes taught are not long remembered.  What did your preacher talk about last Sunday morning? . . . You probably have to think about it or may not recall at all.  We forget so quickly what is spoken, but the deeds that are done are remembered for a long time.  I remember my dad on his knees in prayer.  I remember my mom doing the hair of widow’s who couldn’t afford the beauty salon.  I remember the two ladies who wrote me every week while I was at college.  I remember their acts and remember their faith in God.

Paul complimented the church in Thessalonica when he said, “The news of your faith in God is out.  We don’t even have to say anything anymore – you’re the message!”  (1 Thessalonians 1:8-9)  There have been many people in my life.  Each one’s acts sent out a message of their faith in God or lack of it.  What message are you sending?