Entreat Me Not to Leave You

This is one of the most beautiful expressions in the Old Testament, in my opinion. You will often hear it read at weddings, and although the original context has nothing to do with a husband and wife, the statement is so lovely, I can understand why it is done.

Ruth 1:15-18

"And she said, "Look, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods, return after your sister-in-law." But Ruth said:

"Entreat me not to leave you,
Or to turn back from following after you;
For wherever you go, I will go;
And wherever 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.
The LORD do so to me, and more also,
If anything but death parts you and me."

When she saw that she was determined to go with her, she stopped speaking to her."

First of all, WHEW!, I could read that and just cry over the beauty of it. What a precious promise to make to another woman, the woman who is in essence, your own mother.

But stepping back from the beauty of it for a moment, I started wondering about the practical reasons why Ruth might feel so strongly about staying with her mother-in-law. Certainly it is possible that Ruth had deep and profound love for Naomi. In fact, I think it is pretty clear that she did feel that way. But perhaps there was more to the story that is not recorded in the Biblical account.

Maybe Ruth came from a family that she did not want to go back to. Maybe they were cruel people. Maybe Ruth and her mother did not get along. Maybe Ruth's father was an overbearing and demeaning man. Perhaps they were very poor and she did not want to become a burdensome mouth for her mother to feed. It could be any number of reasons.

Think for a moment about what a dramatic decision Ruth was making. She was leaving her country of origin, her home where she belonged and had roots. She was leaving all of the comforts of familiarity to travel to a foreign land, where she would not only be a stranger, she would be unprovided for and vulnerable. Women really needed the protection of a husband or a father in that time. And she was not traveling to Bethlehem with any of that assurance. She was risking so much to follow Naomi to a place of uncertainty.

I'm not trying to take anything away from Ruth by suggesting that she had more motive than just love for Naomi. Like I said, that could stand alone as the sole motivation for the decision she made. But there is a part of me that suspects there was more going on in Ruth's life. And I think it is an important thing to consider.

Clearly, God had a perfect and beautiful purpose for bringing Ruth to Bethlehem and ultimately to Boaz. He has a perfect and beautiful purpose for each of His children. But God uses circumstances that we just see as ordinary every day life, or mundane insignificant details, or the way things just "happened" to work out, to bring about His plans for us. It is so tempting to look back at the lives of the people who's stories are recorded in the Old Testament and forget that they were real people just like us. They had all kinds of motivations and circumstances in their lives that God used to bring about His plan, and ultimately, His glory. Things were not happening in their lives by chance or accident. But they probably didn't see it that way as they were living through the day to day details of it.

Maybe Ruth's mother was dead, and her father had remarried a woman who held Ruth in contempt and was jealous of her beauty. That might not seem like a circumstance divinely laid out by God, but it certainly would accomplish His plan. That plan being to get Ruth to Bethlehem, hence to Boaz, and more importantly, into the lineage of Jesus Christ, God's Son.

The point I hope I am making is this:

Everything in our lives is part of God's plan for us. He is totally sovereign over ever single detail. Even the things that make no sense to us, or seem too insignificant to be of any consequence are part of God's plan for our lives.

I can look back at my own life and see decisions that I made, which seemed very small at the time, but resulted in huge changes later on. For instance, I can trace back the way I met my husband to being at a party, and being offended by something a particular woman said, and deciding that I didn't want to be part of her circle of friends. That small thing led to another thing, which led to other things, which ultimately led me to meeting the man that God intended for me to marry. When that first woman left a bad taste in my mouth, the last thing on my mind was that her obnoxious behavior was going to lead me to holy matrimony.

That is why when I look at the story of Ruth, I wonder what else was happening in her life that motivated her to make the decision she did. I don't think it takes anything away from her to consider her story in that light. After all, I believe that she was a very real person, who lived in a real life, and experienced that life just like any other person would. Things were happening to her that she couldn't see the end result of. I'm sure that the exact same thing is happening to me, and to you, right now, today. Don't miss God's hand in your life because it seems mundane. Sometimes His plan is in the mundane, because that is how we experience life. And God has intentionally set out to make Himself known in ways that we can experience! The instances of God appearing personally to someone, or even sending one of His angels to announce His plan are pretty rare when compared to the unknown multitudes of people whose lives He has laid out in intimate detail.

So don't be discouraged! Even when we can't see the end result God can. And believe me, nothing that we can do is going to mess up God's plan. It just doesn't work that way. He is totally in charge all of the time. I don't know about you, but I find that very comforting.