Daily Devotion for September 5, 2006

Faithful

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 anything but death separates you and me.” Ruth 1:16, 17

Life couldn’t have looked like Ruth expected it to in her childhood dreams. She’d risked it all and married a foreign man. Now he was gone, dead before his time. His brother and father were gone, too. Why not go back home and start over? But Ruth was faithful.
 Ruth had struggled to adapt to her husband’s family and their odd customs and religious rituals. She’d grown to love her husband’s God, the God of Israel. She loved her husband’s family, especially her mother-in-law, Naomi. Ruth was faithful.

 Financially, they were cleaned out with no likely solution. They were the poorest of the poor, not sure where their next meal would come from. Naomi explained that the custom of her people was to care for their widows. She desperately wished to return to her homeland. It would have been so much easier for Ruth to return back to her father’s home with familiar customs, a warm bed and predictable meals. But her conscience nagged her. How would the aging Naomi make it on that long journey alone? After all they’d been through, how could she return to a life without Naomi and her God? Ruth was faithful.

 God calls us to be faithful when life looks uncertain. He wants us to hold true to our faith and trust Him when we can’t see a logical reason for doing so. He wants to shower us with blessing, but needs for us to take the first step. Ruth was faithful. Am I brave enough to trust God and be faithful, too?

Prayer
Lord Jesus, life isn’t always like I’d dreamed it would be as a child. Help me to hold onto You when times are tough. I trust that You will see me through. I want to be faithful like Ruth, Lord. Amen.

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