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Good Friday morning my “Walking with Jesus” friends. Happy VALENTINES day!
America brings many things to the social life of our world, and certainly one of them is ‘holidays’. This is one of them. Flowers, candy, cards, candles, wedding engagements and so much more seem to fill the air, at least in America, on this day. Sadly, as we all know, nearly 1/2 of all marriages end up in separation or divorce… the romance of days like today long forgotten.
But may I suggest to you that Valentine’s day should remind us of Jesus and His ultimate expression of love for humanity as He came to earth, spoke God’s truth and showed God’s unconditional love to a human race, which had turned its back on God!
Remember Jesus said “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends…” (John 15:13) A few days before, Jesus had said “I am the good shepherd; I know My sheep and My sheep know Me. The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep…” (John 10:11,14) The cross stands as the ultimate love expression of God for humanity!
Yesterday we began a love journey found in the Old Testament, in the story of Ruth. Let’s rejoin Naomi and her two daughters-in-law, as they have begun a journey together in Ruth 1:6. While living temporarily in Moab to escape famine in Bethlehem, Naomi’s husband had died, and both her sons had married Moabite women, and then after a time both sons died. So three widows are clinging to each other for hope. Word has come to Naomi that the famine in Israel has ended and there is food again in Bethlehem, from which she and her family had fled more than 10 years before.
So widow Naomi has decided to return home in hopes some friends might remember her and help her survive these widow years. Her two daughters-in-law love her very much, and feel a responsibility to help widow Naomi. So much so, that they are willing to leave their homeland and travel back with her, even though they will be scorned, for Moabites and Israelites did not get along in those years, about 1100bc.
However, as we’ll see beginning in verse 8, Naomi urges her Ruth and Orpah, her daughters-in-law, to return to their families, while she travels on alone toward Bethlehem. “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the LORD show kindness to you, as you have shown to your dead (husbands) and to me. May the LORD grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.’ Then she kissed them and they wept aloud and said to her, ‘We will go back with you, to your people.” (Ruth 1:8-10)
Let’s stand along the dusty roadside with these three widows. Feel their pain, their discouragement. The younger widows are conflicted of course. They know if they return with Naomi and seek to help her in her old age, they will likely never find husbands among the Jewish men of Bethlehem. Their only option will be to work in servitude type jobs, if anyone would have them, and they will simply survive day to day, perhaps sometimes relying on begging on the street corner for handouts, and shunned as unwanted Moabites.
Naomi was right, if they return to their mother’s homes, they will be loved, have shelter and safety, and very possibly find husbands among their own people again. But, if they do so, leaving Naomi to travel on alone, she will likely either die on the journey, or survive as a destitute, ageing widow too old to be married again, and without family to help her in Bethlehem. I imagine these three widows sat by the roadside in the shelter of a tree for a long time discussing their plight and weeping often.
Did you notice twice Naomi urged her daughters-in-law to consider the God of the Hebrews, “the LORD”, and His loving care for them and His Sovereignty? We presume the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, ‘the LORD’, was not worshiped by the Moabites, and Naomi, now without husband or sons, may have been the only person in the entire land who worshiped ‘the LORD’. Hers would have been a private worship, without all we have to sustain our spiritual lives today. She had no church, no Bible, no Christian friends, no Christian radio, TV, or publications. Did you know there are many Christians like Naomi in our world in 2020? They live in places where the name Jesus is either unknown or prohibited. Where the Bible has either not yet been translated into their language or is forbidden. Consider that a moment my friends! How would you nurture your spiritual relationship with God if you lived in such a place today?
From verse 11-15 the author of the little book of Ruth, gives us the opportunity to sit with these three widows as they grieve, discuss their options, and weep together. As you read these verses, I think you’ll find yourself easily drawn into their pain, and the difficult decisions they face. And finally the good-bye, as Orpah sees the wisdom of Naomi’s urging and bids farewell, turning to head back to her family, leaving Ruth and Naomi embraced and weeping, on the side of the road, looking west toward the mountains which divide Israel from Moab.
Finally Ruth speaks, and from her heart come some of the most loving words ever spoken, especially between two widows, a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law: “…Don’t urge me to leave you or 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. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.” (Ruth 1:16-18).
What do you hear my friends, in Ruth’s remarkable words?
Would you agree these words form the foundation of authentic wedding vows? If this was how marriages and families were birthed in America and around the world, the rate of abandonment, separation, and divorce would plummet! Children would never wake up in a family where one parent has to explain why the other parent has willfully left them.
50 years ago Dawn and I met in a College cafeteria for the first time in early September of 1970. At that first meal together, after we exchanged names, the next question was ‘where are you from’? She told me her town and I asked, ‘”and where else?” She was startled by my question. I then learned she had lived her entire 18 years up to that point in the same house! She had never moved… except to leave home, to come to College!! I’d never met anyone like that! I had grown up as a ‘TCK’ (third culture kid). By my freshman year in College I’d lived already in two different countries, and three different US States, because my parents had been missionaries.
As Dawn and I began to grow our friendship, of course lingering in the back of her mind was the question: ‘if this gets serious and I marry this guy, could it be I too will end up living in many different places by the end of our lives together’? By God’s grace, we felt very strongly HE had brought us together, and we married the day after I graduated from College. We have sought to ‘walk with Jesus’ and He has led us through several years in business & education careers; then several years in foreign missions; then several years as Pastor and wife serving different churches in America!
We have lived in 3 different countries, 7 different States! And the words of Ruth have been an important truth for us. However, it has not been Dawn following me, or me following Dawn, it has been the two of us following JESUS together and wherever He has led us, those people have become our people, that land has become our temporary home. For our ultimate home is with Jesus in heaven, and we are thrilled to ‘walk with Jesus’ and trust Him for every day here, seeking to make each day count by trying to love and serve people in Jesus’ name, and point as many people to Jesus as we possibly can, no matter where we are.
I doubt any of us can fully comprehend the implications of what Ruth was saying to Naomi on that roadside that day. For Ruth, she was giving up any hope of ever being married or having children. She would likely have a very difficult life doing whatever she could as a foreigner in Bethlehem, scouring around each day to find enough food for that day for she and Naomi. She would leave behind her family and the probability that she might marry again and have a family in Moab. This was a remarkable, self-sacrificing decision by Ruth. How could she have done it, you might ask?
May I suggest the key is in the middle of Ruth’s statement: “Your people will be my people, and your God my God.” (Ruth 1:16) Ruth had become interested in Naomi’s spiritual relationship with the one, true, living God. Naomi had undoubtedly told her the long story of Abraham & Sarah, Isaac & Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel and the rest of Jacob’s large family. The years of slavery in Egypt, and then God’s deliverance of His people through Moses and the plagues. Their entry with Joshua into the ‘promised land’ and above all, God’s faithfulness, God’s power, God’s provision for His people through the centuries. Ruth evidently had decided Naomi’s God was going to be her God. And Naomi’s God could be trusted for the future, far more than if Ruth chose the logical, more desirable path, back to her family and their gods.
Do you see how the story continues: “When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her. So the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem…” Let’s travel with them today. All through this Valentine’s day. I’d like to urge you to think about the love demonstration of young widow Ruth walking with her mother-in-law and their few belongings, down the dusty road toward the mountains, and beyond that, Israel, Bethlehem. How many times did Ruth pause and turn to look back? What did they talk about? How often did Naomi simply start praying, out loud, asking for God’s protection, guidance and provision? How often did they stop to rest, and embrace each other again… two widows, trusting their lives to God and to each other?
Oh Lord God, thank you for this remarkable story of Naomi and Ruth. On this Valentine’s day, helps us be watchful for anyone to whom we can offer a touch of God’s love. May I ask God that you especially encourage the widows and widowers who may be reading this, anywhere in the world. Thank You for Your great love for us!
Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.
Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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