My friends, we live long after the Messiah came into this world and told us to share the good news of God’s love in word and deed…and yet, I wonder sometimes what we actually share by most of our words and most of our deeds. And then I encounter Boaz, who lived long BEFORE God sent the Messiah into this world. And without any knowledge at all of Jesus, Boaz shared God’s love with those like Ruth who needed it most. And we still remember Boaz’ story to this day.
Y’all, my reading of the Bible is that God wants us to live out the point of Stone Soup all the time. God wants us to share love and kindness and even material stuff with other people. When we do, instead of locking ourselves behind the closed doors of stinginess and selfishness, we will enter into the party going on the village square, the party that is the Kingdom of God, the party where there is more than enough to go around and everyone is having a great time.
When we work to place relationships first over everything else – and by relationships I don’t mean just feeding off of others but offering to serve others in relationship with them – when we work to place relationships first over everything else, THEN, we will begin to experience the amazing power of relationships that God offered us from the beginning!