Ruth 1:6-18
When Naomi heard in Moab that the Lord had come to the aid of his people by providing food for them, she and her daughters-in-law prepared to return home from there. With her two daughters-in-law she left the place where she had been living and set out on the road that would take them back to the land of Judah.
Then Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go back, each of you, to your mother’s home. May the Lord show you kindness, as you have shown kindness to your dead husbands and to me. May the Lord grant that each of you will find rest in the home of another husband.”
Then she kissed them goodbye and they wept aloud and said to her, “We will go back with you to your people.”
But Naomi said, “Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? ... It is more bitter for me than for you, because the Lord’s hand has turned against me!”
At this they wept aloud again. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye,but Ruth clung to her.
“Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.”
But Ruth replied, “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.” When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her. - Ruth 1:6-18
Dear Lord,
Once you created faith in my heart, you made me closer than family to everyone else who trusts in you. I now naturally want to be around people who believe in your supreme sacrifice for them, who want to follow you and glorify you in the way they live, who love others unashamedly, who forgive, and study the word and put in a hard day's work. I want to be with your people wherever they gather. Everywhere else, even my old family places, are less appealing than the places where your people go. You made me like Ruth who left everything at home to follow everything you had given her. Thank you for filling my life with yourself and people like Naomi.
Amen
Pastor Don Patterson
Once we have met and trusted the Lord, his people become our next of kin.
