SDfAoWOP: Ruth

Day Sixteen

Ruth 1:16

But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.17 Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.”

Three women stand bereft in a field. Everything is lost to them. Death has taken everything they had, everything they wanted. The future is gone into the grave. No children, no grandchildren, no men. They are the picture of the modern way. Childless, alone, untethered. So many women stand tall and lonely, choosing between darkness and hopelessness.

'Don't leave me here,' says Ruth. Let me go with you. Let your God be my God.

Naomi takes the name bitterness. She can't see into the future. It seems she is going backwards, into the past, back to the land where God had already seemed to fail her. Why would she take anyone with her?

'Don't leave me here,' says Ruth. Somehow, in this desolate field, her eye are open. She tethers herself to The Lord. 'Let me go with you.'

Orpah makes a show of grief and goes away. Untroubled. Ready to sort things out herself. She doesn't see the peril. Death is just another part of life. She will pull things together and make a go of it.

'Don't leave me here,' says Ruth. Naomi relents. What can she do? The one who loves The Lord will go even unbidden. They bind their way together and The Lord adds to the thread of salvation.