Today’s Devotional Theme Where You Go...
Daily ScriptureRuth 1:16
“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. For your people shall be my people and your God my God.”
Encouragement
Ruth is one of the most loved figures in the Bible. The book bearing her name tells her story in simple, direct, and beautiful Hebrew. The apparent setting: the time period is 1100 BC or earlier, and judges rule the fledgling Hebrew nation, (Ruth 1:1). Famine wracks the land, and some of the people migrate east, across the Jordan into a region then known as Moab. The matriarch Naomi loses perhaps to disease her husband and her two sons, leaving her with the Moabite daughters-in-law, Orpah and Ruth. Naomi decides to return to her homeland in Israel, and she urges her bereaved daughters-in-law to remain in Moab, their native land. Orpah does, but not determined, strong-willed Ruth. She foresees a better life west of the Jordan. That brings us to our scripture for today, verse 16. Despite repeated urgings from her distraught mother-in-law, Ruth announces her intention to make Judah (west of the Dead Sea) her new home, adopting the Hebrews as her people, and, most significantly “your God shall become my God.” With God she finds favor, marrying the wealthy landowner Boaz and inserting a Moabite woman into David’s, and eventually Jesus’, bloodline.
Apply God’s Word
What can we 21st century God-followers glean from Ruth? God is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34), and He accepts foreigners into the Hebrew fold. For anyone – gender, skin color, culture, or past life are no hindrance – can easily and quickly adopt into the family of God by accepting the salvation that Jesus Christ offers. With all my career doors closed, my head swirling in a drug-induced stupor, I found new life – as Ruth did – in a strange land when I proclaimed, that “your God shall become my God.” Happily married, with two grown kids launching promising careers and two delightful grandchildren within an hour’s drive, I don’t look back or lament about what could have been. From Jeremiah 30:22, “I, Jehovah, will be your God.” And that’s just fine with me.
Come into His Presence
My Lord and my God, I thank and praise You for accepting me into your family. Once a sinner, now a saint of the most high God. I know I cannot thank You enough, but that won’t stop me from trying! In Jesus’ name, amen.
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