Trusting Like Ruth
Come, Lord Jesus. We are Ready.
This year, Advent has been a pure gift to me. I can’t tell you exactly why. I have done many of the things I typically do in any given year. Picked up a devotional, set aside time for quiet candlelit prayer (almost) daily, and listened to many a podcast that inspired me. These are not new habits for me. But the fruit was so much more visible this year.
Why? Perhaps because this year has been one of personal and professional growth, beauty, hardship, and heartache, and the resting has been a balm to my weary and grateful soul. Or perhaps because I resolved to do one thing each day that brought my heart intentional rest, I could just see Him more clearly, and anticipate Him more fully. But when I really examine my heart, I believe it might be because of my journey with the book of Ruth, and other books, that have allowed me to lean into the love story that He wrote us in Sacred Scripture.
As I’ve learned and loved with the biblical figures in Ruth over the past couple years, I have grown to appreciate the depth of their hidden lives with God. At the beginning of this book, Ruth adamantly insists on following her mother-in-law back to a homeland and a people completely foreign to her. She finds hidden in her own heart the courage to trust a God that she does not fully know by committing to a life with Naomi.
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.” — Ruth 1:16-17
Think about this, my friends. She commits to a God that she does not fully know. What kind of crazy trust fall was that? I always wonder at this point in the story: what was it? What made Ruth so sure that she was going to accept the God of the Israelites as her own, and go against every comfort and convenience she had ever known? To leave her own family of origin and set off into completely uncharted territory?
I wish I could sit down and have a cup of barley tea with our dear girl and ask! But until then, I marvel at her courage. Her wisdom. And her trust and anticipation that something great was to come. Ruth is worth pondering as we close out this Advent season. Have we spent time anticipating the marvelous wonder that is to come? Have we trusted enough that no matter how dark it gets, the Light is coming? Sister, I pray that you and I would trust like Ruth and guard our hearts with courage and faith as we journey these last couple days to meet our Newborn King. Come, Lord Jesus. We are so ready.
Thank you for drawing us closer to the silence of the infant in the stable throughout Advent. I wish your family a blessed Christmas season! ❤️🙏🏻
What I love about that story is that Naomi was bitter when Ruth decided to follow her. In her raw grief and bitterness, Ruth still saw the light of God within her MIL and longed to remain with Him and come to know Him better through Naomi and her people.
I can also relate so much to leaving everything behind. I am "home" for Christmas in New Zealand and though it is such a sweet gift, my heart also aches being here, knowing I will be leaving again soon, back to the other side of the world (the Netherlands) and yet being so far away is also a conscious and willing surrender I made a few years ago to be there for my MIL, who was also there for me after my own Mum died. It is good to continually remember that decision I made with God.
One of my sisters is a Ruth too (I am holidaying with her and her family now)- and that always makes me think of my Mum and her love of the loyalty of Ruth. I miss her so much, even more being "home", but so thankful for my sister and her beautiful heart too (a piece of my Mum with me here).
Thank you for these reminders of God's presence.