July 16

Ruth

Ruth of Moab, the subject of the biblical book that bears her name, is an inspiring example of God's grace. Although she was a Gentile, God made her the great grandmother of King David (Ruth 4:17), and an ancestress of Jesus himself (Mt 1:5). A famine in Israel led Elimelech and Naomi of Bethlehem to emigrate to the neighboring nation of Moab with their two sons. The sons marriend Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth, but after about ten years, Elimelech and his sons died (Ruth 1:1–5). Naomi then decided to return to Bethlehem and urged her daughters-in-law to return to their families. Orpah listened to Naomi's but Ruth refused, replying with the stirring words: "Where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God" (Ruth 1:16). After Ruth arrived in Bethlehem, Boaz, a close relative of Elimelech, agreed to be Ruth's "redeemer" (Ruth 3:7–13; 4:9–12). He took her as his wife, and Ruth gave birth to Obed, the grandfather of David (Ruth 4:13–17), thus preserving the Messianic seed. Ruth's kindness and selfless loyalty toward Naomi, and her faith in Naomi's God, have long endeared her to the faithful and redounded to God's praise for his merciful choice of one so unexpected. [From "Commemorations Biographies," Lutheran Service Book, LCMS Commission on Worship]

1054 Church legates of the Roman pope marched into the church of Michael Cerularius, Patriarch of Constantinople, and placed a bull on the altar excommunicating him. It was the beginning of the Great East-West Schism between the Western Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox.

1228 Pope Gregory IX (ca. 1143–1241), who greatly favored the new mendicant religious orders, the Franciscans and the Dominicans, canonized Francis of Assisi (1181–1226).

1505 Martin Luther celebrated with his friends before officially entering the monastery.

1519 The Leipzig Debate, in which Luther argued that church councils had been wrong and that the church did not have ultimate doctrinal authority, concluded.

1664 Andreas Gryphius, hymnist and Silesian poet, died at Glogau (b. 11 October 1616).

1769 Spanish Franciscan friar Father Junípero Serra (1713–1784) founded the San Diego de Alcala mission in California.

1805 Johann Christoph Blumhardt, teacher at the Basel missionary institution and pastor in Moettlingen who reportedly cured people by prayer, was born in Stuttgart (d. 25 February 1880). [German Wikipedia article]

1863 Howard E. Smith, American church organist and hymnist, was born (d. 13 August 1918, Norwalk, Connecticut).

1878 Ephraim Weston Clark, missionary to Hawaii and Micronesia, died (b. 25 April 1799).

1897 The Manitoba [Lutheran] Synod was organized through the efforts of the German Mission Board of the General Council.

1905 Lorenz A. Buuck was born in Van Wert County, Ohio (d. 15 September 1993, Fort Wayne, Indiana). He graduated from Concordia Theological Seminary (Springfield, Illinois) in 1930 and served as a missionary in China for many years. He was also a pastor in Arcadia and Noblesville, Indiana; Garfield and Ormsby, Minnesota; and Mattoon, Wisconsin.

1914 The first Lutheran service was held in the Kolar Gold Fields in India, at Samarajapet.

1929 C. C. Abbetmeyer, professor at Concordia College (Saint Paul, Minnesota), died in Watertown, Wisconsin (b. 19 August 1867, Bodenteich, Hannover). He immigrated with his parents in 1873 to Minnesota and studied at Northwestern College (Watertown, Wisconsin) and at the Wisconsin Synod seminary there. He served parishes in Wisconsin and Minnesota and then for several years in a congregation of the English District of the Missouri Synod in Baltimore, Maryland. He was a professor of English language and literature at the Saint Paul college for eighteen years and also taught briefly at Valparaiso University. He had just accepted a call to Northwestern College at the time of his death. He was the author of The Pastor in the Sick-room, Sermons on the Catechism, Daily Prayers and Lutheran Forms for Sacred Acts. He edited Young Lutherans' Magazine for several years.

1931 Missionary C. T. (Charles Thomas) Studd, one of the famous "Cambridge Seven" and missionary to China, India and Africa, died (b. 2 December 1860).

1942 George Alfred Taylor Rygh, translator of Scandinavian hymns into English, died (b. 21 March 1860).