"18 And she took it up and went into the city. Her mother-in-law saw what she had gleaned. She also brought out and gave her what food she had left over after being satisfied. 19 And her mother-in-law said to her, “Where did you glean today? And where have you worked? Blessed be the man who took notice of you.” So she told her mother-in-law with whom she had worked and said, “The man's name with whom I worked today is Boaz.”20 And Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “May he be blessed by the Lord, whose kindness has not forsaken the living or the dead!” Naomi also said to her, “The man is a close relative of ours, one of our redeemers.” 21 And Ruth the Moabite said, “Besides, he said to me, ‘You shall keep close by my young men until they have finished all my harvest.’” 22 And Naomi said to Ruth, her daughter-in-law, “It is good, my daughter, that you go out with his young women, lest in another field you be assaulted.” 23 So she kept close to the young women of Boaz, gleaning until the end of the barley and wheat harvests. And she lived with her mother-in-law."
Ruth 2:18-23
Matthew Henry suggests that the question in 19, 'Where hast thou gleaned today?' is a good one to ask our souls at the end of each day. Have we been about the Master's business? Or has it been a day or wasted hours?
We see from 20 that it is at this point that the light began to break for Naomi. She began to see something of God's dealings with her, and realised that out of the black darkness of despair and bitterness God can bring light and hope and grace, and that even by the most apparently trivial circumstances a whole new situation can arise fraught with significance and opportunity. It is here that we see the bigness of God's ways and purposes. He does nothing little! And even to be an insignificant actor in the great drama of redemption is a great thing. O to have a greater consciousness of this! All this imparts a thrill and a wonder to the spiritual life. One just never knows what is go- ing to happen next, for the providence of God works secretly on, guiding and directing all the way that we take, silently planning in love for us. It may well be that some trivial circumstance that has happened to us today may change the whole course of our lives, because God has been at work in it. Ruth's happening upon Boaz's field (3) ways cer- tainly fraught with immense consequences, not only for her, but for the world!