“Why have I found favor in your sight that you should take notice of me, since I am a foreigner?” (Ruth 2:10)

I was reading Ruth 2 this morning when this verse jumped out and hit me in the face. Taken by itself, it very easily could be (and ought to be) us talking to God. The Bible calls us sojourners in a foreign land as Christians, thus as sinners we were living in our native land, foreigners to God’s Kingdom. But Paul says that “while we were yet in sin, Christ died for us”. Jesus paid the price for our sin while we were still foreigners. We found favor in His sight, and we had done nothing to earn it. Indeed, even after we accept His free gift of salvation, there is nothing we can do to EARN the gift we have been given. It is a gift, and gifts are not earned, they are freely given. The ultimate gift, from God himself, is not different. In fact, it is quite the opposite from what we might expect. Not only is it impossible for us, as fallen humanity, to earn His gift, but we do not even deserve the gift that Christ Jesus gave us. We often give things to our children when they do something special, when they “deserve” the gift, but the gift of God is a foreign gift to a foreign people.

Why have we found favor in His sight? What makes us so incredibly special? That He would give, not just a trinket, but the most valuable object imaginable, His very own Son, is beyond incredible. He favors us, He cherishes us, He loves us unconditionally, because He created us for that very purpose. God created humanity to have relationship with Him, and while sin has made us foreigners, He has not forgotten that for which we were made. He remembers that we were made to live as children of God. And so He calls us to come back and be made right again. Come!