Roasted Grain & Redeeming Grace
“At mealtime Boaz said to her, ‘Come over here. Have some bread and dip it in the wine vinegar.’ When she sat down with the harvesters, he offered her some roasted grain. She ate all she wanted and had some left over.”
—Ruth 2:14
Life has a funny way of not playing fair and throwing curve balls when you least expect it.
This morning I was curled up on my couch, sipping my coffee and reading my Bible. It’s a rare day where I am able to ignore my emails. Instead today I take a deep breath and have a day off before my next workshop in Charleston begins tomorrow. I’m reading the book of Ruth and a few things felt profound enough that I wanted to share them with you.
Allow me to give you a quick refresher on Ruth. She’s a woman who has lost her husband, her brother-in-law and her father-in-law. Losing a husband in any era of time is an excruciating moment. However losing a husband in Ruth’s day (1160-1100 BC) would have had big repercussions. For Ruth, it also meant losing both her legacy and her deceased husband’s because he passed without them having children.
Ruth refuses to leave her mother-in-law when she decides to return to her homeland. It would have been common and even expected for Ruth to go back to her parents after her husbands death. Instead she’s loyal to her mother-in-law. An eye brow raising fact is that her mother-in-law wasn’t exactly a warm fuzzy sort of person. Ruth displays her loyalty and her mother-in-law stops talking to her. See Ruth 1:8.
After the journey home, we now have two widows with no means to care for themselves. Ruth takes it upon herself to provide for her and her mother-in-law. It was custom to go to a field and pick up the pieces of wheat left over as the men harvest. And this is where our story begins…
Waves of barley and wheat blew in the wind. It would be a long day of stooping low, step after step, to gather what others left behind. Ruth had come with nothing and was only looking for scraps of survival.
But grace has a way of finding us in the ordinary.
Boaz, the landowner, sees her. Not just her presence, but her heart. And instead of leaving her at the fringes, he calls her close. He not only tells his men to stay away from her, but he also instructs them to throw excess out intentionally for her to gather behind them. This wasn’t the way things were done, on top of which, she was a foreigner so we’re now at a place of breaking cultural norms. Finally, if his actions weren’t shocking enough, after they are finished for the day, he invites her to his table to eat with him and his workers.
“Come over here. Have some bread and dip it in the vinegar.”
In the ancient world, this was no small gesture. To eat with someone was an act of belonging, of welcome, of and elevating a person’s dignity. And the dipping of bread in vinegar—likely a sour wine used by laborers—signaled not just provision, but shared identity. He doesn’t treat her as a foreigner, a widow, or a gleaner. He treats her as one of his own.
He then passes her the roasted grain himself. She takes it, eats and there’s still more leftover. She wraps it and takes this ancient doggy bag home to her mother-in-law.
This moment is redeeming grace in its most tender form: not just enough to survive on, but enough to thrive on. Not just scraps, but abundance. Not just tolerance, but a warm invitation.
It’s a whisper of the Gospel in a barley field. Boaz, as a type of Christ, extends to Ruth what Jesus later offers to us:
A place at the table. Nourishment for our soul. Kindness that surprises us.
And more than anything—a picture of a God who doesn’t leave us to glean at the edges, but brings us close, feeds us with His own hand, and calls us beloved.
The thing is, taking the higher road, showing honor when it’s not deserved, responding with kindness when someone hurts you, is never not noticed by God.
Following days of silent travel with a bitter mother-in-law, God orchestrated a not so random field of wheat, owned by a man who not only showed her kindness, but had the power to change the rest of her life.
What struck me most was this:
God’s actions aren’t thwarted, delayed, impacted or ruined by the negative actions of those around us. Look and hold tight to the things He’s placed in your heart, and etch those promises into the fabric of everything you are. In short….keep going.
Reflection
Have you ever felt like you were gathering scraps in your life—just getting by, unseen, small, overlooked?
The heart of God sees you, too.
He whispers: “Come closer.”
He pulls out a chair for you at His table.
He offers roasted grain—simple, warm mercies—grace in everyday form.
And He doesn’t just meet your need – He does so with abundance.
With God, there’s always leftovers to share with others and an abundance of Grace to carry you through.
