"And she said, Behold, thy sister in law is gone back unto her people, and unto her gods: return thou after thy sister in law.
And Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God:
Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me."
Ruth 1:15-17
What I notice about these verses today is Ruth's commitment level. Her mother in law tells her that she is free to follow her sister in law's example and return to her old life, and Ruth makes it *super* clear that she has no intention of doing so. She is completely committed, all in on her new life, even without her husband, including her commitment to her mother in law and to God and the religion that she married into. It would have been really easy to go back to what she had known before, and Naomi even encourages her to do so, but Ruth isn't swayed in the least. She has embraced what she has chosen fully and still chooses it.
I wonder sometimes if we lack that same kind of commitment and determination in our lives. So often I think we kind of half-choose, trying to hedge our bets or only commit partially. It reminds me of James 1:8: "A double minded man is unstable in all his ways." When we work so hard to not choose, or to hang on to incompatible choices too hard, we stop progressing, because we are kind of dancing around the crossroads hoping to see far enough ahead to make a decision, and even walking a few steps down one, then coming back and trying the other... and we aren't actually getting anywhere.
I am not a poster girl for decisiveness or commitment, but Ruth inspires me to work on that. She knows what she wants, what she believes in, and she says so, and acts on it, and builds her life around her faith in that belief. I would like to be more like Ruth in that way. Today, let's work on emulating that--choosing God and sticking with that choice, never backing down or out when things get hard or allowing doubt to send us back to look down another path. Let's have faith that God's path leads us everyplace good, and will help us become our best selves... because it will. Let's go all in with God. As we do, he will be able to go all in with us, supporting us in our faithful decisions and leading us into perfect happiness because he can trust us to commit to the opportunities that he gives us.
And Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God:
Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me."
Ruth 1:15-17
What I notice about these verses today is Ruth's commitment level. Her mother in law tells her that she is free to follow her sister in law's example and return to her old life, and Ruth makes it *super* clear that she has no intention of doing so. She is completely committed, all in on her new life, even without her husband, including her commitment to her mother in law and to God and the religion that she married into. It would have been really easy to go back to what she had known before, and Naomi even encourages her to do so, but Ruth isn't swayed in the least. She has embraced what she has chosen fully and still chooses it.
I wonder sometimes if we lack that same kind of commitment and determination in our lives. So often I think we kind of half-choose, trying to hedge our bets or only commit partially. It reminds me of James 1:8: "A double minded man is unstable in all his ways." When we work so hard to not choose, or to hang on to incompatible choices too hard, we stop progressing, because we are kind of dancing around the crossroads hoping to see far enough ahead to make a decision, and even walking a few steps down one, then coming back and trying the other... and we aren't actually getting anywhere.
I am not a poster girl for decisiveness or commitment, but Ruth inspires me to work on that. She knows what she wants, what she believes in, and she says so, and acts on it, and builds her life around her faith in that belief. I would like to be more like Ruth in that way. Today, let's work on emulating that--choosing God and sticking with that choice, never backing down or out when things get hard or allowing doubt to send us back to look down another path. Let's have faith that God's path leads us everyplace good, and will help us become our best selves... because it will. Let's go all in with God. As we do, he will be able to go all in with us, supporting us in our faithful decisions and leading us into perfect happiness because he can trust us to commit to the opportunities that he gives us.
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