“Then they lifted up their voices and wept again; and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.” Ruth 1:14
This is a story of two women at a critical crossroad with lifelong consequences. As young women in Moab they discovered a new family who came to town with 2 young men as sons. These women fell in love with not only the men but with their parents. No doubt the family shared their beliefs, their challenges and their victories with their daughters-in-law but the most wonderful gift they gave these foreign women was an introduction to the One true God of the world. Eventually their father-in-law died and a decade later both women became widows, all in the course of 10 years. I can’t even imagine the heartbreak, grief, tears and hopelessness this family must have felt. All they had left was who they had come to know and love…their mother-in-law. And now, she had decided to go back to the town from where she originally traveled. Now they were forced to either leave what they had known all their adult lives or return to their old way of life. Staying in their current set of circumstances was no longer an option. Ruth chose to step out in faith and followed Naomi back to her country leaving her old life behind. Orpah chose the path of least resistance, chose familiarity and the ease of disappearing back into her former life. And just like that, she also disappeared from the pages of the Bible while God breathed the story of Ruth onto the pages.
I was thinking about the times when life forces our hand at critical crossroads in our own lives. Decisions must be made, and consequences will follow the choices. So how do we decide the most important things in our lives that just might send a lifetime of ripples throughout our remaining years? We can look to Ruth for several principles before we set out from the crossroads. Ruth followed Naomi’s decision who had patterned her life around God. Ruth was committed to her commitments …Naomi had become her family and everything that Naomi chose Ruth chose. Ruth had developed her own relationship with God, not a borrowed faith from her mother-in-law. So, when the very woman who had been her spiritual role model was disillusioned and devastated, Ruth stepped up and became her spiritual role model. You never know when some aching heart will turn to you to be that faithful woman of comfort and encouragement.
We will all come to spiritual crossroads that will have lasting impact on not only our lives but those in our sphere of influence. Like Ruth we must live our faith in action, not in words like Orpah. We must walk out the hard situations instead of running away to the comfort and escape of something ‘comfortable and familiar.’ Like Ruth we must cling to those who are suffering, showing them life after tragedy and hope after despair.
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