FELLOWSHIP GROUPS

 – SUMMER 2002 MAY 28/30

THE BOOK OF RUTH: ‘LIFE-STORY : LIFE-VALUES’

(1) RUTH CHAPTER ONE: FAMILY LIFE and FAMILY VALUES

I.THE STORY

• 1.1-7: GOING AWAY
• Talk about the general background to this lovely story. What do you know about the places, the people involved, (their names and meanings?), the life of those times (1.1)
• Talk about the particular background to the story: the coming of a famine. Why do you suppose it came?
• Was it purely a meteorological matter?
• Could it have been a spiritual consequence of the people’s moral and spiritual backsliding in the wayward days of the Judges?

(See Deuteronomy 28.14,8,12 and 28: 15-18,38-42)

• THE RADICAL DEPARTURE: 1.1-2

To move his family from the Promised Land to a pagan country was a big decision for Elimelech to take!

• Was he right or wrong to do this?

(- What were the causes that made him go?

 What was his purpose in going? Were his aims achieved?)

Was his going an understandable reaction to a great need? Or was it a lack of faith in God? (Why?)

 Some life-decisions are big and hard!

• If we make wrong life-decisions, does this put us beyond God’s providential care? Does it ‘write us out’, permanently, from God’s purposes and plans?

(What does the story of ‘Ruth’ teach us?)

• THE TRAGIC DEATHS: 1. 3-5

Triple bereavement!

• Talk about the full and dreadful implications for the women of this dreadful disaster. (What were the prospects of widows in those ancient days?)
• What can you glean from the story about the exact effect these awful bereavements had on Naomi’s faith? (1.13 and 1.20-21)? Was her faith destroyed? What happened to her faith?

• THE PAINFUL DECISIONS: 1.6-18

Naomi’s decision to return home 1.6-7

• Talk about Naomi’s decision. Why did she make it? How big a decision was it? How hard or easy? What factors did she have to weigh up? What cost did the decision have for her?
• What impresses you about Naomi’s attitude to her daughters-in-law at the time she made her decision to return home?

Orpah and Ruth’s decisions: 1.10-18

• What do you think of their different decisions? Was one right and one wrong? What exactly were they having to choose between? How hard do you think it was to choose? (What would you have chosen?)

Ruth’s amazing declaration: 1.16-17

• Talk about Ruth’s determined self-commitment. Do you admire it? To what things was she committing herself? What was the biggest life-commitment ? Now important was her commitment?
• What do you think inspired and motivated Ruth to make such a noble commitment?

• 1.19-22: COMING BACK HOME
• What did the return to Bethlehem mean for Naomi?
• What do you suppose it meant for Ruth?

• THE VALUES:

I find in this chapter a very precious affirmation of the priceless values of FAMILY LIFE and of FAITH and of FAMILIAR, ORDINARY PEOPLE and THINGS.

• THE VALUE OF FAMILY LIFE – Discuss together how this chapter brings out the precious values for our personal lives and for our society as a whole of COMMITTED FAMILY LIFE.
• What shining values do we see?

Why are these so essential for personal and social happiness and

well-being? Are they missing today?

• THE VALUE OF FAITH – The whole of ‘Ruth’ witnesses to the immense strength that a living faith in the sovereign providential care of God brings to life. How does this chapter illustrate this?

• THE VALUE OF THE FAMILIAR, ordinary things. EVERY INDIVIDUAL AND ALL OF ORDINARY LIFE MATTERS TO GOD. ‘Ruth’ is about a single, ordinary individual (‘a certain man’) and his ordinary family.