Scripture Daily

Context No. 2032 of 4322 · Ruth

Context · Reflection

Ruth 1:16-22: in context

16Ruth said, “Don’t urge me to leave you, and to return from following you, for where you go, I will go; and where you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God my God. 17Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD do so to me, and more also, if anything but death parts you and me.” 18When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her. 19So they both went until they came to Bethlehem. When they had come to Bethlehem, all the city was excited about them, and they asked, “Is this Naomi?” 20She said to them, “Don’t call me Naomi. Call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. 21I went out full, and the LORD has brought me home again empty. Why do you call me Naomi, since the LORD has testified against me, and the Almighty has afflicted me?” 22So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabitess, her daughter-in-law, with her, who returned out of the country of Moab. They came to Bethlehem in the beginning of barley harvest.

Naomi, widowed and bereaved of both her sons in a foreign land, urges her daughters-in-law to return to their own people. One does. But Ruth clings to her and answers with words of remarkable devotion: do not urge me to leave you; where you go, I will go; 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. Ruth binds herself to a bereaved, empty-handed widow, to a foreign people, and to their God, come what may.

Ruth's pledge is a picture of costly, committed loyalty. She had every reason to turn back: Naomi was bereaved, aging, with nothing to offer, returning to a land where Ruth would be a foreigner. The sensible course was the one the other daughter-in-law took, to go home to her own people and start again. But Ruth chose loyalty over self-interest, binding herself to Naomi with a love that would not let go, taking Naomi's people as her own and Naomi's God as her God, pledging to stay to the very end. It was a love that cost her everything and asked for no return, a loyalty that stayed when leaving would have been easier. There is something here to learn about the loyalty love shows. Much of our love is conditional, staying while it is easy and profitable, drawing back when the cost rises or the return disappears. Ruth's love was different: it bound itself to another in her emptiness, promised to stay, and asked nothing in return. This is the loyalty Scripture praises, a friend who sticks closer than a brother, a love that bears all things and endures all things, that stays through hardship and loss rather than drawing back when the cost appears. Ruth's clinging faithfulness to a bereaved widow is a small picture of a love that does not abandon, that binds itself and stays. And it points beyond itself. For God's love for us is a love that stays, that binds itself to us and does not let go, that remains faithful when we have nothing to offer. Ruth's loyalty to Naomi reflects, in a small way, the covenant faithfulness of the God who says he will never leave us. This searches our own love and loyalty. Is it conditional, staying while it is easy and drawing back when the cost rises? Or does it bind itself and stay, like Ruth's, loyal through hardship, faithful when there is nothing to gain? The call is to a love that stays, that binds itself to others and remains faithful, reflecting the God whose love for us does not let go.

Is my love and loyalty conditional, staying while it is easy and profitable but drawing back when the cost rises or the return disappears, or can I learn from Ruth, who bound herself to a bereaved, empty-handed widow with a love that asked nothing and stayed to the end, to love with a loyalty that binds itself and remains faithful, reflecting the God whose love for me does not let go?

Sources