Jordan - Ruth 2

Community is a powerful thing.  There is always a physical connection with community.  At Faith, it is obviously our church and garden.  Up until the last century, community was always the few square miles around which you lived.  For Naomi, she goes back to Bethlehem for the community that would protect her since whe was now a widow and in a patriarchal society, her survival rested in community and family.  Ruth goes out into her community to find a way of finding income and ends up in Boaz's fields picking up the leftovers that the workers are leaving behind in the harvest.  This old style community has strange "support networks" for those in poverty.  It wasn't quite a handout, because Ruth worked hard in Boaz's fields, and yet it wasn't quite traditional labor either.


At Faith, we should work on our community.  Find out where it is working and where it seems to leave people behind.  We aren't really just a building or a physical space and it is not ok if that is our identity.  Our identity should be something that describes who we are, not where we are.