Personal Devotions
Notes from Mark's personal Bible reading and meditation
With a goal to apply one truth from each day's reading to my life that day
Jan 29, 2025, 12:21 PM
Passage Read: Ruth 1-4
Meditation Verse: 4:15
Thought
This story of Ruth and Naomi is a welcome counterpoint to the stereotype of mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law. Naomi must have been a very godly woman to inspire such loyalty among her daughters-in-law.
Jan 24, 2024, 1:53 AM
Passage Read: Ruth 1-4
Meditation Verse: 3:11
Thought
Ruth was a woman of excellence, because she was willing to give up the life she could have had in her own country to return to Israel with Naomi and care for her. She was a woman of excellence because she diligently gleaned in the fields to provide for herself and her mother-in-law. She was a woman of excellence because she was content with their lot, but obedient to her mother-in-law when she sent her to Boaz.
Jan 10, 2023, 7:26 AM
Passage Read: Ruth 1-4
Meditation Verses: 1:16-17
Thought
This is what it looks like to surrender our life for the good of another. Ruth could have returned to her own people and found a new husband and been taken care of, but she understood the situation Naomi would be in and chose to give up her own desires in order to care for her. God rewarded her with a godly husband and a glorious inheritance, becoming an ancestor of David and of Jesus. She gave up an easy and obvious path to security, she gave up her own life in order to become the servant of another, who would otherwise have little or no hope.