Discover The Word

Monday, July 12, 2010, Part 3

Ruth chapter 1

IDEA: What we are shows up in our lives in many ways that we are not completely aware of.

PURPOSE: To help listeners think about the deductions they make about others.

There’s a little box locked up in the Library of Congress.  It isn’t on public display.  The label on the box reads, “Contents of the President’s Pockets on the Night of April 14th, 1865.”  What night was that?

There are five items in the box:

A handkerchief embroidered “A Lincoln.”
A pen knife.
A spectacles case repaired with string.
A small purse containing a $5 bill in Confederate money.
Some old and worn clippings describing the “Great Deeds of Abraham Lincoln.”  One clipping reported on a speech by the English statesman, John Bright.  He called Lincoln “one of the greatest men of all times.”

Why do you think Lincoln carried those worn clippings in his pocket?  Do you sense something pathetic, imagining Lincoln reading those clippings from time to time under a flickering flame in his office?

What have we done by looking at those articles?  Do they give us any insight into the mind of Lincoln at the close of the Civil War?

Good story-tellers allow us to form our own conclusions about the characters from the details in their stories.

The author of the story of Ruth lets us form our own estimate of Ruth by describing what she says and does.

I. We learn about Ruth from what the writer tells us about her in chapter 1.

What can you tell me about Ruth and what she has experienced in her life?

What do you guess about her developing relationship to her mother-in-law, Naomi?

What do you know about Ruth’s character from the first chapter?  How does she compare or contrast to her sister-in-law, Orpah?

Where is Ruth from?  So what?

How does Naomi feel about Ruth at the end of chapter 1?

How do you feel about Ruth at the end of the first chapter?

II. If you had not read this story before, at the end of chapter 1, what direction do you think the story might take?