Reunion with Ruth

I went to the annual United Beach Missions (UBM) reunion last weekend, down in Powys. For not having attended it after my beach mission years ago, it feels now that I have completed the cycle. It was wonderful to meet up with 300 other folk who love the Lord and love to spread His fame. I gave a short talk on William Tyndale but the real highlight was a tour through the book of Ruth, with Paul Smith, Roger Carswell, Richard Hilliard and Paul Williams each taking a portion and applying it to our faith and lives (Steve Taylor and Tim Howlett continued the theme on the Sunday which I was unable to attend).

I have, of course, read Ruth many times and heard it preached on several more, but I meditated upon it afresh. It is not that the preachers brought out endless new thoughts and applications which I had never heard before (some there were, certainly) and neither do I think that the Holy Spirit was engaged in some particular work of conviction. Rather, it testified to the fact that God’s word is for ever new and for ever fresh; its depths we cannot plumb, its riches we cannot overspend, its applications we cannot exhaust. Those who tire of the Bible barely read it and certainly never knew its Author.

Blessed art thou, O Lord: teach me thy statutes. Psalm 119:12

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