Persistent decisions.

 Day 7

Ruth 1:14,16-17

Ruth clung to her…But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.” 


I remember in my much younger days how I would be obsessed with women I admired and looked up to. I so wanted to be like them that I would harass them to the point of annoyance. Have you ever done it? Or have you ever been the object of it? Have you ever had someone in your life who simply will not let you go? Wherever you go, there they are. If you move away, they call you every day. They want to have the same friends you have. They make friends with your family. They start going to the same church and join your small group. It just feels like you’re being stalked. And the problem becomes bigger, and more annoying when all you want is to be alone. All you want is to be left to yourself. Perhaps after a hard break-up, or after a deep loss, let’s face it, there are times when we are not the best company. Yet, there is this person, insisting on not letting you be.

Perhaps we see a little bit of this in Naomi. Perhaps all she wanted was to break away and not have anything else to do with Moab. After all, as much as she had thought long before that it would be good enough to leave the support of home, it had turned out that the grass was not greener there after all. It was time to leave Moab in the past, and bringing her daughters-in-law with her would be a constant reminder of it. She simply could not bring Moab back home. She was done. She needed a new start. She needed to return to what she knew before and perhaps knew she should never have left. She needed to return to what she knew before; to return to the old, with no trace of the time away.

But it says that Ruth clung to her. The Hebrew word used here for cling is the same one used in other parts of Scripture as taking the holding on to the Word of God and applying it, demonstrating faith. Ruth is demonstrating her faith in Naomi, regardless of this stage in her life, as well as faith in her God and her people. What did she see in Naomi to make her so persistent? What made her think that Naomi’s God and her people would be better than her people and her gods? And why would she make a lifetime commitment to this foreign woman, to the point of becoming a foreigner herself? Yes, life would not be easy in Moab as a widow, but there was no guarantee that it would be any different in Israel.

Which are you?  Ruth, or Naomi? Are you clinging or trying to leave something behind? #getittogethergirl Don’t give up.

Father, what am I clinging to? And what am I trying to leave behind? Please help me find in you the grace to leave behind whatever has been hindering my walk with you, whether big or mundane. Help me drop the chains that bound me and cling to Your Word, so I can find peace and nourishment in my spirit. Give me the freedom to move forward to the future that You have prepared for me. In Jesus’ name, amen.

My reflections:

“I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”

John 15:5

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