Sacrificial Love

Pastor Renee Ford and Cassandra Lyon, a Penn State Graduate

With the theme on loyalty this morning, Pastor Renee Ford continued her summer sermon series on the "Dog Days of Summer," and how it ties in with our scripture reading from Ruth 1:6-18. In this reading, Ruth shows her loyalty to Naomi, her mother-in-law, by staying by her side regardless of the consequences for Ruth.

Dogs also display loyalty regardless of the consequences. Zander, a white dog, travelled two miles through heavy traffic to the hospital where his owner was a patient. Pastor Renee shared how her own dog would travel to her school each day to watch for her and then travel back to where she would get off the bus after school. Incredible loyalty. She said there are countless stories about dogs’ loyalty that could fill volumes.

As we can see from the stories above, dogs will take incredible risks for their owners out of love. Ruth knew that Naomi needed someone to take care of her, so, out of love, she took incredible risks to stay by Naomi’s side.

Another moral to these stories is that often our richest treasures result from our faith journeys. We need each other more than anything else. Our lesson is not what we have that matters, but who we have. Picture God’s love for us.

This week, Pastor Renee would like us to follow Ruth’s example when someone needs our care.

Pastor Renee Ford is the pastor for Grays United Methodist Church, Houserville House of Hope, and Woodycrest United Methodist Church. She is also an Instructional Designer for the Department of eLearning Design and Innovation Group in the Smeal College of Business at Penn State.