She halted.
Before her eyes, lay
desert and desolation.
Facing her,
a life bare and blank.
Husbandless.
Childless.
And futureless.
Homeless.
Inheritance-less.
And assurance-less.
Too young to be a widow, too old to be a child.
Daunting, disheartening, dismaying.
Quietly she questions the only one able to answer, “Will my life forever resemble what I see?”
Without hesitation words spew from her mouth,
“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.
Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried.
May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely,
if even death separates you and me.”
(Ruth 1:16–17)
Surprised by her own conviction, she embraces her appeal and begins the long walk to a daring life lived differently.
Courageous.
Audacious.
And unwavering.
Ruth was not the woman we expected.
She was a Moabite my birth,
An idol worshipper by trade,
And a pagan by existence.
She was an enemy to Israel.
Not one to be chosen,
Redeemed,
Or restored.
But as she stood, with two ways to turn laying in front of her toes,
She chose to dare differently.
She chose the God who was choosing her.
Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy,
made us alive with Christ even when we were
dead in transgressions—
it is by grace you have been saved.
(Ephesians 2:4 –5)
Leaving behind her family,
Her friends,
Her religion,
And her nation,
She turned toward Bethlehem.
Behind her the land without promise and now before her
the promise land,
Behind her a god of wood and now before her a God of flesh.
Behind her a dying kingdom and now before her an eternal one.
When all told her to pursue the things of this world
Marriage,
Money,
And merry,
She dared differently and turned a different direction.
We read four chapters later, this same Moabite woman is holding a baby.
A baby not in the line of destruction but in the line of deliverance.
Daring differently changed her destiny.
