What Can I Learn from the Story of Ruth?

Join us in learning more about the story of Ruth from the Bible. We find ways to apply the experiences of Ruth from Ruth chapter 1 to women today. On this episode we are joined by Heather B. Moore, an amazing author who happened to write a novel about Ruth.

Key Talking Points

·     What life was like for women during Old Testament times.

·     Sometimes we want to isolate and be alone during grief or pain.

·     The desperate situation for widows in Old Testament times, and how we are all beggars to God.

·     We can be answers to peoples prayers in hard times—the angels God sends like Ruth was to Naomi. She was loyal and kind.

·     Ruth’s true conversion to the God of Israel even in the face of such hard times, and leaping into the unknown trusting God will guide you.

·     View family members & those we love through the lens of Jesus Christ with love and compassion and treat them that way.

·     Pray and ask God to open your eyes to see others you are struggling with as He sees them.

Main Takeaways

·     From Bonnie, “We can strengthen [relationship] bonds, but it takes going to God and asking for his help, and having Him remove the bitterness, and forgive…. [and] not judging.”

·     From Heather, “Prayer can really soften our hearts. And deliberately praying, whether it's for someone that's hurt us or offended us… And if we can see someone through God's eyes, then it just brings that peace to our own lives.”

·     From Tamara, “I think anytime we go through something hard like these women definitely have there's a there's always the option to tip towards God or away from God. … And I love that, in their grief, these two women stayed true to Jehovah to their God.”

Heather B. Moore’s Bio

Heather B. Moore is a USA Today bestselling author of more than ninety publications. Heather writes primarily historical and #herstory fiction about the humanity and heroism of the everyday person. Publishing in a breadth of genres, Heather dives into the hearts and souls of her characters, meshing her love of research with her love of storytelling.

Her ancient era historicals and thrillers are written under pen name H.B. Moore. She writes historical women's fiction, romance and inspirational non-fiction under Heather B. Moore, and . . . speculative fiction under Jane Redd. This can all be confusing, so her kids just call her Mom. Heather attended Cairo American College in Egypt and the Anglican School of Jerusalem in Israel. Despite failing her high school AP English exam, Heather persevered and earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Brigham Young University in something other than English.

You can find a Heather’s novel about Ruth here.

Please join Heather's email list at: HBMoore.com/contact/

Website: HBMoore.com

Instagram: @authorhbmoore

Facebook: Heather B. Moore

Keywords

#ruth #naomi #god #Biblestory, #BibleWomen #love #grief

#convertedtoChrist #JesusChrist

Transcript

Tamara Anderson 0:00 

Question for you guys. Have you ever wondered how the story of someone in the Old Testament like Ruth, applies to you today? I know I've wondered that before and, and so we're going to dive in and figure out how we can apply some of these things from her life to us. Stay tuned.

Tamara Anderson 0:24 

Welcome to Bible, Women & Bathrobes the podcast where faith meets comfort. Join us Tuesday and Thursday mornings as the gals from Women Warriors of Light and their guests, don bathrobes and dive into the inspiring stories of women in the Bible, and the teachings of Jesus Christ. From Esther's bravery to the Sermon on the Mount. We explore it all with warmth, laughter, sisterhood, and maybe even a few sleepy eyed moments. Tune in live or at your leisure as we learn lessons from scripture which empower women today.

Tamara Anderson 1:06 

Awesome. Well, ladies, welcome to the story of Ruth, we are so excited to be with you today. And I need to introduce Bonnie and I are on as hosts and co host and we have a guest today and we are so excited to have her on. And so let me introduce Heather B Moore. So Heather B. Moore is a USA Today best selling author of more than 90 publications. Holy cow. That's all I can say. Because I've only published I think four or five things. Actually, I think it's five now. And let me tell you that the publication process is nothing to snub your nose out. There's a lot that goes on behind the scene.

Tamara Anderson 1:48 

So Heather writes primarily historical and hashtag her story fiction about the humanity and heroism of the everyday person. Publishing in a breadth of genres, Heather dives into the hearts and souls of her characters meshing her love of research with her love of storytelling. Her ancient era historicals and thrillers are written under the pen name h be more. And she writes women's historical fiction, romance and inspirational nonfiction under Heather be more and speculative fiction under Jane read. This can all be confusing, so her kids just call her mom.

Tamara Anderson 2:34 

Heather attended Cairo American college in Egypt and the Anglican school of Jerusalem in Israel. Despite failing her high school AP exam, Heather persevered and earned a Bachelors of Science degree from Brigham Young University and something other than English. You can join Heather's email list at HB moore.com. And visit that that's her awesome website where you can find her books. Her Instagram handle is author, HB more, and Facebook is hp more. We are so happy to have her on with us this morning. Thanks for joining us.

Heather B. Moore 3:12 

Thank you so much for having me. I've been looking forward to this for a while.

Tamara Anderson 3:18 

Oh, well. And here's the cool thing. The reason we're having Heather on this morning is because she wrote this awesome novel about Ruth. And I just thought, wow, if you can write a story about someone in the Old Testament, you've done your research. And so I thought this is great, because the women in Old Testament times God bless them, I think they had a pretty difficult. Heather, why don't you kind of paint the background of what life was like for women in the time of the Old Testament?

Heather B. Moore 3:52 

Yeah, it was definitely was very challenging. As far as our modern viewpoint, one of the challenges I have as an author, when I write historical fiction, based on Old Testament characters, is trying to understand their mindset, and their culture. Because when I think of what their lives are, like, I get all caught up in well, that's not fair. And how come? How come they couldn't, you know, how come a woman can't own property? But, and, and how did she feel about that? Like I have to, and all of us, as we're studying the scriptures to try to understand, just in the context of the life they're living and the things that were were important to them may not be the exact same things that we feel like they should have, you know, been doing or making decisions on.

Heather B. Moore 4:41 

And so for Ruth specifically, and Naomi, her mother in law, is they both became widowed as we know. And so this sets them into kind of a different sphere of life, especially Naomi because she loses both of her sons. And in ancient Israel, it wasn't just having sons was seen as kind of a war, it was definitely a blessing from God. And so she feels like she's probably been picked on a little bit, not only after her husband, but her two sons are gone. But her sons are her insurance policy, they're the ones that will ensure that she's taken care of in her old age.

Heather B. Moore 5:23 

So she truly is destitute, not only grieving, but she doesn't really have a place to turn and that she can somehow live off of someone's charity, or become a beggar herself. So she, she obviously has a really good relationship with her daughters in law. And this is a little bit of a different situation than we may have today.

Heather B. Moore 5:48 

But, but when a woman marries, in the in that era, she will then go and live in her in laws home, not necessarily sometimes they have their home built in levels. And so you might have your own level, but you're basically under the roof of your mother in law. And so you become very, very close. Unless you don't have a good relationship, then it'd be a lot of friction. You become part of that family, you're literally becoming a daughter to your mother in law.

Heather B. Moore 6:18 

And so Naomi enjoy that relationship with her daughters in law, they seem to be even though there weren't children involved, for whatever reason, maybe the marriages weren't, hadn't been going on very long. And so but another thing that that Naomi dealt with is she was in a foreign land, and Moab but it wasn't the land of Judah, and it was a land where maybe Naomi and her husband, they were just one of the few who are actually practicing their religion. And so which is another way that Naomi was probably kind of set apart from her community. And so she didn't feel like she could go to people in our community for help. So she had to leave Moab in order to really ensure her future.

Tamara Anderson 7:05 

Yeah, and this story, it talks a lot about loss. And, and so I, I thank you so much for kind of setting the stage there. I think that even though their lives are so different, though, that there are little points we can really glean from the stories. And so like Heather said, there was a famine that had been going on in the land at that point, and especially in the land of Judah, these Moab and Judah were like 30 or 40 miles apart, it wasn't that far. I mean, to us today, but to them, of course, they have to travel those 30 to 40 miles by foot or by donkey or something like that, you know, so it was probably farther to them than it was for us.

Tamara Anderson 7:57 

And so they had gone Elimelech was Naomi's husband, and he and his wife and sons had moved to Moab during this famine, they kind of that's where they went, and then Elimelech dies, but in the meantime his two sons had married two Moabite women. And and so then the Lord, Well the two, the two sons died, like Heather said, and so, here are three grieving widows and, and they're all together, but what do you do? What do you do when, when, I mean, they didn't, they couldn't just go out and get jobs like we do nowadays. And so they're grieving, they need to support themselves, their husbands were also their their protectors, you know, and I think that that right there says a lot about these women, their desire to love and support and be with one another.

Tamara Anderson 8:24 

And so then we kind of come to these verses where Naomi is saying, I can't help you guys have more kids because I'm too old to have more sons, which kind of was the I don't know tradition back then. But so she's She encourages them go back to your families. And she's just, you can see that she is just in the depths of grief. And and I don't know if any of you guys have ever been through grief, but she she's encouraging them to go off and live a better life and leave her.

Tamara Anderson 9:08 

But why is it that sometimes when when we're in pain, we push people away? I don't know. Have you guys ever experienced that when you're in pain, you're just like, I just kind of curl up into a little ball and leave me alone. Everybody just,

Heather B. Moore 10:05 

I feel, I don't know. I don't know if that's a personality of a woman or just my personality. But I feel like like, say I had like a surgery or an injury. It's like, I just want to be by myself and just almost like suffer by myself, because I feel like I can kind of get through it. And I don't I don't know, it's a release. And it's not like I want to be isolated. Because obviously if I need help, I'm going to welcome some help. But as far as like, enduring the pain, whether it's emotional or physical. I just want everybody gone. I just want to get through it, like white knuckle it, I guess. Yeah.

Tamara Anderson 10:45 

I think we all have that tendency to just kind of ah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Bonnie, any thoughts on that?

Bonnie Randall 10:53 

I mean, I've noticed that my clients and myself, it's just human nature, to isolate when you're going through trials, and you're going through challenges, and yet, what's also human nature for women is we, we might isolate from the men shut them out, which is kind of weird, right. But we also complain to each other. So we might isolate and not want help. But we will also talk to each other and complain.

Bonnie Randall 11:31 

And, you know, we have this amazing ability to bond with each other. So I think it's interesting that she had that experience with those two daughters was and I felt like Ruth was the more I studied it, the more I realized it was so much deeper of a story than what I had originally thought it was honestly one of my least favorite Bible stories. I think I told you this Tamara, a few months ago, I felt inspired, I felt prompted to study the book of Ruth. And I just rolled my eyes at the spirit of like, what, Ruth, what is there to learn about Ruth, she's some daughter in law of this lady. You know, and I just thought, and so I started reading it. And I read through it, but I didn't do a deep dive and I just thought, Okay, it's about loyalty. Great. All right, what am I supposed to learn?

Bonnie Randall 12:33 

And I felt the Spirit prick my heart and say, you've got some family stuff, you've got to get through anybody to forgive. And I thought that was the lesson. And then when you invited me to do the podcast and just study Ruth again, I just have to like, clearly didn't learn the lesson. There's some deeper stuff here with Ruth, what is the deeper? And oh, my goodness, my mind has been blown at the deeper lessons of Ruth, and I can't wait to hear what Heather uncovered with her research, because I know she spent even more time researching it than than I did. So I'm curious what you know, on the surface level, we have this one story, we have layers of story here. So I'd love to unpack that if we're ready.

Tamara Anderson 13:25 

Yeah, let's do it. Um, I think we can't go much farther in this story without talking about Orpah. I guess that's how you say her name. She was the other daughter in law for Naomi. And Naomi said, you guys go back to your own families. And they both said, No, we'll stay with you. And finally Orpah said, You know what, I am gonna go back to my family. And I think some of us might, you know, in our hearts condemn her for that. But I also I think, at least in my mind, is I look at the different journeys we all take in life. We're all on a unique path, and we can't like say, Oh, well, she was inconsiderate for going back to her family, when perhaps that was the journey, Orpah was supposed to take. Do you know what I mean? So I I'd love to just kind of say don't be too judgmental, because she was on her own path and journey. Any thoughts there, Heather?

Heather B. Moore 14:20 

Yeah, I mean, and that was their culture. So actually says, And Ruth chapter one, verse eight. And Naomi said unto her, her two daughters in law go return each to her mother's house. So her mother's house that is actually referring to matchmaking. scholars think that that Naomi is basically releasing them to go and marry someone else because they are they are married into Naomi's family, so they're going to feel that loyalty to her. And so she's kind of releasing them from that loyalty.

Heather B. Moore 14:53 

And also is interesting because of course later there's the famous promise from her said I will go or you go now your God will be my God. So that's a very significant event because Ruth has a has basically joined like the same beliefs as Naomi. And so she has departed from her mom about Moabite ways. And the gods that that they worship in Moab, which would be probably multiple gods. And she has taken upon she's had the spirit testify to her that Naomi's religion is is the true religion. So she's she's actually converted her heart and maybe Orpah hasn't, you know, hasn't converted in that way. And so it's more than just this family tie. And this relationship and this obligation toward a mother in law, but, but also it's religious. And she, she knows that if she goes back to her own family, Naomi, or I sorry, Ruth goes back to her own family, that she'll probably have to put away the things that she believes in. And so that's another thing that I think that we, we kind of see what's happening, too.

Tamara Anderson 16:10 

Yeah. You know, I was pondering this. Because sometimes when we go through something especially difficult, and these women clearly have what the loss of their husbands, we kind of have a tendency to kind of shake our fist at God a little bit when we go through the grieving process. And part of one of those steps is anger. And I know I interviewed enough people on my previous podcast to, to know that anger is a big part of grief. And so I'm just amazed at Ruth's ability to know even even though she was perhaps young in her faith, her ability to stay committed to God, even in a difficulty, like the loss of her husband, you know, any thoughts on that?

Heather B. Moore 17:05 

I think I think that's a really good point. Because for for Naomi to put her trust in the Lord to return to Bethlehem, even though she she probably, if you look at this setup, so being in Moab, her husband didn't own property, which is, which is why there's no chance for her to stay there. And they are probably maybe renting land or working for, you know, another family or something to live there. And, but she probably could have gotten back with Orpah, or with Ruth, she probably could have gone and kind of begged her way into living with them. But for whatever reason she had, she had enough faith still in her that if she could, she'd rather return to Bethlehem and just take her chances there and hopefully, appealed to her kinsmen. And hopefully the famine was over. And I don't know how much a word traveled if she knew the famine was over yet or not. But she had that faith at least there.

Bonnie Randall 18:15 

Didn't she have land? I think I remember reading. She had land in Judah. And...