Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“So she went. She came and gleaned in the field behind the reapers. As it happened, she came to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the family of Elimelech.”
NL Daily Devotion for Monday, August 22, 2022
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
Plausible coincidence. It’s a literary device. If the coincidence is just too unbelievable, the reader gets frustrated and probably doesn’t keep reading, so you need to be careful, as a writer, to convey the coincidental happening as something that might actually happen.
In this case, we have Ruth just “as it happened” coming to glean in the field belonging to her mother-in-law’s kinsman, Boaz. How is that believable, especially knowing what we know about the rest of the story?
For one thing, Naomi moved back to Bethlehem, where her husband’s family lives. Second, Bethlehem is a small town. We don’t know how small for sure (some very unscientific math from internet sources gives me a number anywhere from around 600 to just over 5,000) but since Boaz was a land-owner, which would have been a smaller portion of the population, and Ruth was gleaning in the fields, sooner or later she would probably have wandered into his field.
Of course, plausible or not, we are to believe that God has a hand in all of this, and that rather than coincidence, the meeting of Ruth and Boaz was actually inevitable. But as with the tragedy that set up the story, the meaning and outcome of this supposed coincidence will only be clear in hindsight. The story continues…
Have I experienced what seemed like a bit-too-unbelievable coincidences in my life? What were the outcomes? Did I see God’s hand in things?
