Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.”
Ruth 1:16 (NIV)
One of my sons had a mild case of separation anxiety when he was a preschooler. He would cry and cling to me when I dropped him off at school, but the teachers assured me that he always calmed down and enjoyed his time with his little friends. One thing that helped him was knowing for sure that Mommy would always come back to pick him up and take him home. He trusted me.
When Ruth left her native land of the Moabites to go to Judah with her widowed mother-in-law, she told Naomi that she could trust that Ruth would stay with her. Naomi was understandably feeling very vulnerable and admitted she felt bitterness towards God about what had happened in her life. It must have been so comforting for this lonely woman to know that Ruth would not abandon her.
Ruth’s willingness to leave behind her old life in Moab, and her promise to stay with Naomi is a good example for us in our relationships with our church families.
Committing our lives to God means that we also commit our lives to His other children, our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Please share a comment! Ed.
Brother Sister let me serve you,
Let me be as Christ to you,
Pray that I may have the grace to
Let you be my servant too.
PTL 16
I love that song. Thanks for the reminder!
Beautiful. I think David must have told Ittai the Philistine that story. When Ittai came to help David when he fled from Jerusalem, he paraphrased Ruth’s words: “wherever my lord the king shall be, whether for death or for life, there also will your servant be” (2 Kings 15: 21).
What an interesting parallel! How beautiful to imagine David telling the story of his great-grandmother to others, inspiring them to help each other. Thanks!