How quickly our perspective changes

This morning, I actually had the thought:

"I've only got 30 gig left. I've got to do some house-cleaning on this hard drive!"

Hmmmm ... how fast things change!

Only 10 years ago, it was:

"I've only got 30 mg left. I've got to delete the temp files!" :)

Actually, I'm working with a little film scanner to scan in all my old negatives, so the pictures are quickly consuming great chunks of hard drive. Hence the desire to keep as much free as possible. The scanner is a snazzy little critter - about the size and shape of a shoebox. It does a great job, and is fairly fast - I got about 40 pictures done last night while I was watching the (videotaped) finale of the Amazing Race.

That show is one of my guilty pleasures. I love to travel, and it interests me to see how people interact with each other in the stressful situations that travel presents. This year one of my favorite teams won. It was a couple of easy-going guys. They were nice to each other, and to the people they met along the way, and just flat-out seemed to be enjoying the travel, whether they won or not.

No exercise happened last night (reference the above videotape/scanning negatives time indulgence!). But I did get some great time in the Ruth study.

Ruth is the story of a widowed mother, living outside her homeland, who marries her sons off to two native girls. The sons die, and one girl chooses to stay in her home country, while the other, Ruth, travels with her mother-in-law back to Israel.

In Israel, Ruth works in the fields to provide for the two of them, and eventually meets the owner of the field, Boaz, - a family member of her mother-in-law.

There is an Old Testament practice where a dead man's closest male relative will take the widow as his wife, and the first son resulting will inherit the dead man's estate, and provide for the widow. The new husband is called the "kinsman redeemer".

Through her mother-in-law's prompting, Ruth asks Boaz to take on this role. Boaz tells her that there is a closer relative who has the right to do this, but if that man doesn't agree, then Boaz wanted to marry her.

Anyhow ... the reason I relate all this is to say, One of the things I'm doing is tracking all the references to time and location - down to the very minute, in the book.

And there are a LOT of them. It's written almost like a play ... you know where everyone is, and when they're there ... right up until chapter 4.

Chapter 4 (the last chapter) is where Boaz sits down with the closer relative to discuss who would marry Ruth.

Ruth is an Old Testament book that, while portraying actual history (she was the great-grandmother of King David), also carries a picture of the Christian's salvation.

Ruth was a Gentile. She had absolutely no rights among God's people. But she was brought in by Boaz, and made a child of God. We, too, have no rights before God. We are born in sin, and there's nothing we can do to change it. But Christ DID what we couldn't, took our penalty, and has made us a child of God.

There was a closer family member who had the first right to Ruth. So the Old Testament law had the first rights to US. If we don't accept Christ's provision to save us, there is ONE other way available. If we keep the Old Testament law perfectly, to the letter, we can be saved that way. However, in the history of the world, only the Lord Jesus has done so ... so that route is not promising!

Anyhow, what I really wanted to share this morning was the change that happened at the beginning of chapter 4. The narrative went from a meticulous focus on time and location, to having nearly none. And from the moment the transaction was sealed ... and Ruth was Boaz's wife, nothing at all.

It's like time and location ceased to be significant.

When our place with God is sealed ... time and space become less significant for us, too. I've got a few more decades here ... but forever with Him. People I love may be far away, but He is with me, and with them.

Not as polished a presentation as I'd like of what I'm thinking about ... but if I wait for polish, it just doesn't get done most days. :)