Women of the Bible
But Ruth said: “Entreat me not to leave you, or to turn back from following after you; for wherever you go, I will go; and wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people,and your God, my God.” Ruth 1:16
Ruth’s early life was marked by family tragedy. Her husband’s family had moved to Midian to escape famine in Israel. Over the course of the ten years that they lived there, Ruth’s father-in-law, brother-in-law, and husband all died. The tragedy weighed hard on her mother-in-law Naomi who told the people of Israel to call her Mara (“bitter”) when she returned home to Israel.
Lord willing, our own family tragedies are not as weighty and bitter as those of Ruth and Naomi, but tragedy is a reality that we live with in our sinful world. By faith, Ruth understood that earthly sadness is not evidence that God is not real or powerful. On the contrary, she understood that the true God of Israel still had a plan for her when Naomi urged her to return to her family. Ruth clung to Naomi and Naomi’s God.
God did indeed have a plan that beautifully unfolds in Ruth chapters 2-4. Ruth was the great-grandmother of King David and one of the Gentile women mentioned by name in Jesus’s genealogy in Matthew 1.
We pray in the Lord’s Prayer “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10), but we often question and doubt God’s plan when we run into difficulties. When those times come, we should remember that God’s will is always good and gracious toward His people. The heroes of faith throughout Scripture were faced with great difficulties and grief, but we can see in them how God is always active and powerful, guiding His people toward eternal salvation.
What God ordains is always good:
Though I the cup am drinking
Which savors now of bitterness,
I take it without shrinking.
For after grief
God gives relief,
My heart with comfort filling
And all my sorrow stilling.
Lutheran Service Book 760:5