Widowed, caring for her mother-in-law, Ruth the Moabite Gentile sets the bar for women—and men—honoring God with her actions. Trudging the dangerous, lifeless, hundred-mile journey across the Dead Sea landscape from Moab to Bethlehem, leaving her own family to care for her likely querulous and sensitive Jewish mother-in-law, Naomi, Ruth bears it all with poise and beauty, and most of all love for Naomi.

She is a picture of God’s grace, as she and her mother-in-law’s family are both rescued by the Kinsman Redeemer, Boaz. What an illustration of the redemption of all nations that is not only possible, but also a perfect part of the Divine Plan.

That same grace flows to all who need it, even to you and me, and even to the woman who was summoned to King David’s bedroom, where they committed adultery against her loyal husband and leader of David’s army, Uriah (2 Samuel 11). Uriah was cheated twice by his king, first of his wife, then of his very life. God sees to it, however, that it is Uriah’s name that is included in Matthew’s genealogy, not Bathsheba’s. This gives us another remarkable glimpse into God’s grace, as Jesus is willingly identified with sinful humanity in this tainted ancestry.

Yet even in this stain, Bathsheba is elevated by God as the mother of Solomon and placed in the line of Christ the Lord. He makes beauty from our mistakes.

Have you felt forlorn? Out of place? Tainted? Stained? His grace can redeem us all.