The following is a devotional I recorded for KCNI AM1280 as part of a ministry of the ministerial association. I tried to carry over some formatting throughout the week.
Sometimes life goes off track, either for ourselves or for those we care about. In such times of turmoil, emptiness, and despair, the Book of Ruth offers us some strings of hope on which to cling.
Good morning. I’m Matt Fowler, the pastor of Broken Bow United Methodist Church. And this week, let’s explore the story or Ruth from the Old Testament to grasp onto threads of hope for trying times. Today, we’ll begin with chapter one of Ruth.
The story begins at a low point. Famine lead an Israelite couple named Naomi and Elimelech to flee from their homeland to the land of Moab. There, presumably, things begin looking up for Naomi and Elimelech. They find a way to survive, and they have two sons. Still living in that foreign land, Elimelech dies, leaving Naomi and their sons to fend for themselves. Each son gets married to a Moabite woman, but then each son also dies. Things couldn’t look much worse for Naomi. A woman in the Ancient Near East during a time of warring clans and factions, all doors were closed to her. She had no way of making a living for herself and no hope of being cared for by her children and their families. And so she resigns herself to her destitution and decides to go back to Bethlehem, thinking that perhaps she can at least die a beggar-woman in her own land.
She sets off with her two daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth, but then quickly decides she doesn’t want to drag them down any further with her. So she tells them to leave her, to go back to their families, where, hopefully, they’ll be able to be cared for, maybe even marry again. Both Orpah and Ruth decline, but after a second time of being told to go, Orpah departs in tears; meanwhile, Ruth does something remarkable and irrational. She commits to staying with Naomi. In perhaps the most famous lines of the book, she says, “Wherever you go, I will go; and wherever you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God” (1:16). And so, the two of them turn toward an uncertain, and likely impoverished future in Bethlehem.
Perhaps you’ve felt, or are feeling, like Naomi and Ruth must be feeling at this point in the story, or you know someone who is. Naomi, playing on her name, which means “pleasant,” she says, Don’t call me Naomi anymore; call me Mara, for I am, as the name suggests, a bitter, empty woman (1:20). Naomi is empty, hopeless, and grief-stricken. And likely Ruth feels similarly.
Even so, Ruth, a foreigner, commits herself to Naomi, knowing that things may never get better. In her commitment to Naomi, Ruth shows us something of who God is, and also who we’re called to be. Ruth embodies God’s steadfast love that endures forever, who walks with us through thick and thin. Ruth doesn’t have to stay with Naomi. Every custom of their day says it would be better for Ruth to accept Naomi’s command to leave, but Ruth stays. The Judeo-Christian faith rests upon the conviction that God is always present, even when we’re not entirely sure about it, and even when, through our words or actions, we attempt to tell God to get lost. Ruth doesn’t say she’ll fix everything. She knows there’s no fix. But Ruth stays.May we see God’s presence in others who stand by us, and may our presence with others convey God’s presence with them.
Trying to Hear 