RUTH 1:14:16

At this they wept aloud again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye, but Ruth clung to her. “Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.” But 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.

TO PONDER

Where is home for you?

I have had this conversation quite often lately with various people and realised I don’t have a “home” after living in 3 different countries, in well over 30 separate houses/apartments, and I am a citizen of 2 nations. Returning to Australia almost 10 years ago, after 17 years abroad I found I had not returned home.

Today’s verses are from a story about leaving, returning, heartbreak, faithfulness, and redemption.

Naomi had moved to Moab, an enemy kingdom, with her husband and their 2 sons due to famine, They settled in Moab with the sons even marrying local ladies, against the commands of both the Israeli and Moabite religions. 

Naomi’s husband died leaving her a widow and then 10 years later both sons also died leaving their wives as widows and Naomi without the needed support of male family. Naomi decided to return to her homeland and encouraged her two widowed daughters-in-law to return to their families to and to find new husbands.

This is where Ruth stood against societal norms, religion, perhaps “common-sense”, and the strong advice of Naomi in an incredible act of loyalty and faithfulness, refusing to abandon her mother-in-law, committing to move to a strange land (where she found redemption).

Ruth the Moabite, the widowed outsider who chose faithfulness, is one of the 5 women recorded in the Genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1:5 including a prostitute, the abandoned, the foreigner, the unwanted, and the unwed mother.

We find in the story of Ruth and confirmed within the genealogy in Matthew 1, home is where you find a grace filled, faithful community where the outsider, the outcast, the forgotten, the abandoned, the sinner are welcomed into community.

PRAYER: Faithful God, I thank you for your unreasonable love and for that love you demonstrated to me even while I was still an outsider help me show your faithfulness, love and grace to everyone around me , Amen.

Today's devotion written by Danny Brock, LifeWay Westside