| | she wasn't from the best background. she married a guy who moved out of the 'promised land,' a land struck with famine. they came with nothing, and they had nothing. they were like modern-day immigrant workers from Latin America (or Southeast Asia). yet, she married one of them. either she was truly, deeply, madly in love with him, enough to give up her own status and what-not like Jasmine in Aladdin, or she probably wasn't much better off - may even be a neighbor in the slums where the immigrant family came to settle in. although, i tend to think the latter was a more probable case, others may have different levels of romantic fantasy.
back when Moses was still around, God spoke through him about her ethnic group as being 'bad luck.' they weren't even allowed into the assembly of God. | no Ammonites or Moabites may enter the assembly of the Lord. even to the tenth generation, none of them may enter the assembly of the Lord forever, because they did not meet you with bread and with water on the way, when you came out of Egypt, and because they hired against you Balaam the son of Beor from Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse you. but the Lord Lord your God would not listen to Balaam; instead the Lord your God turne the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord your God loved you. you shall not seek their peace or their prosperity all your days forever. | | Deuteronomy 23:3-6 (ESV) |
she was bad luck to her husband, her father-in-law, her mother-in-law and her brother-in-law. they weren't even supposed to feed her according to Moses. in fact, they should have given her the toughest time, and they shoudln't even have come near her in the first place.
yet, they were in her land and they took her in.
we can also tell how much of a 'bad luck' she and her people were to her husband's family and her people in the conversation between her new husband-to-be and the guy who should-have-been (Ruth 4:3-8).
then, her father-in-law died, which could be simply from old age. however, her husband died too. even her brother-in-law died. it must have seemed like a family curse. her mother-in-law certainly seemed to think that she was cursed by God. she even told her own folks back home not to call her by her real name, which means 'pleasant,' but to call her 'bitter' (Ruth 1:20). her mother-in-law wasn't evil. she didn't blame her husband and her sons' death on her daughter-in-law being of a 'bad luck' background. in fact, she even blessed her foreign daughter-in-laws, telling them to go home, get better men and start a better family (Ruth 1:8-9, 11-13).
as a result, her sister-in-law left to go back to her own people. i bet she wasn't entirely free from feeling regretful of the fact that she had come this far as her sister-in-law left. yet, she decided not to go back to her own people. | "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 1:16b-17 (ESV) |
that, i think, is a pretty tough decision to make and a pretty tough set of words to utter. that's like telling her mother-in-law, "now that your son's dead, i'm going to marry you. if i ever cheat on you, i want God to kill me and more." she was determined.
her determination, i think, was what impressed God. when He heard her utter those words, He probably went, 'woah..' He had to be impressed, because her story was during the days when judges ruled the promised land, and the people of the promised land were evaluated as "in those days there was no king in Israel. everyone did what was right in his own eyes. (Judges 21:25 ESV)" in short, the chosen people of God were ignoring Him completely. there was a king in Israel: the King of kings. yet, Israel failed to acknowledge Him as their King. meanwhile, here was this 'bad luck' woman who came to acknowledge Him as her King. God had to be impressed. God was so impressed with her determination and faith in Him, in a promise she wasn't a part of, and He blessed her for that determination and faith to become the grandmother of the world's most reknown king: David.
even as we utter words of confirmation, we're often not all that certain about our faith. i know this is certainly true for myself.
yet, this woman from the 'bad luck' next door had faith and determination to seek after God and His promise to His people.
my guess is that she probably knew what sort of status she'd have if she followed her mother-in-law. she probably knew that she was going to be looked down upon, even frowned upon and maybe even abused for the background she came from. she probably knew that following her mother-in-law could possibly end her up as a dead lump on a street corner.
yet, knowing all that, she chose to take the Lord Almighty in as her God, and follow her mother-in-law to whatever comes ahead.
perhaps, this is what we should have: a ruthless trust. | then all the people who were at the gate and the elders said, "we are witnesses. may the Lord make the woman, who is coming into your house, like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel. may you act worthily in Ephrathah and be renowned in Bethlehem, and may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring that the Lord will give you by this young woman." | | Ruth 4:11-12 (ESV) |
in the end of this short narrative, we see how she is blessed by the very people who should consider her 'bad luck.' in fact, they praise her in their blessing, placing her equivalent to their own great great great great great grandmother, and her mothers-in-law.
she was no longer 'bad luck.' she became more than a 'lucky charm.' |
