Good Morning Mystic

Naomi lost everything; her husband and then her two sons. She knows that she must also suffer the loss of her two daughters-in-law.

She tells Orpha (not Oprah) and Ruth to return to their families.  They are young and they can marry, they can have children, sons of their own.  They protest.  They don’t want to leave.   Naomi tells them that she is too old to marry and bear children. As such, she cannot provide these women with sons to marry.  She cannot be a mother to them any longer.  She blesses her beloved daughters and kisses them.  They “lift up their voices” together and weep.  Naomi tearfully sends them on their way.

Orpha leaves.  Ruth stays. 

Naomi counsels Ruth to look after herself, to go and have a life.  Ruth refuses.  She says,

“Do not press me to leave you
    or to turn back from following you!
Where you go, I will go;
    where you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people,
    and your God my God.
 Where you die, I will die—
    there will I be buried.
May the Lord do thus and so to me,
    and more as well,
if even death parts me from you!”

I am moved to my core every time I read these two verses (Ruth 1:16,17).  To be so loved…

In the midst of Naomi’s unfathomable loss, God blessed her with Ruth, a woman who would not live her life without Naomi or her people or her God.  Ruth, the great-grandmother of King David, not a Jew but a Moabitess, clung fast to Naomi.  There was no place else for her to be…in life and in death. 

The story of Ruth is one of true love, of commitment, dedication, and loyalty.  I am humbled to be reminded that God’s love is this love as well.  He is with me all my days, in all ways, unto death and beyond.

*Historical Note:  The Moabite were a tribe of people descended from Moab, one of two sons of Lot, the nephew of Abraham.  Lot’s daughters helped their father to become drunk and then had children through him, seeing him as their only option to bear children.