Imagine you are living in a prosperous family and you have everything you could ever desire. You are married to the man of your dreams and you are living a happy, contented life. But then suddenly, your husband and his brother dies, leaving you and your sister-in-law widows. Within the next several weeks, your aged mother in-law decides to go home, back to her country.
The journey will take her seven-ten days on foot. She is determined to go, and there is nothing you can do to change her mind.
You and your sister-in-law love your mother-in-law so dearly, that you both insist on going with her to help her and to protect her and to keep her company. But weeping, your mother-in-law implores you each to return to your mother’s houses. Her words convey that, if you went with her, you must expect to remain forever homeless and a stranger.
Your sister in-law, with bitter sorrow, tenderly kisses your mother-in-law for the last time, and then she slowly walks down the path in the other direction, hiding her face so that you can’t see the tears that are streaming down her cheeks.
You look at your poor mother-in-law, you note her graying hair and her many wrinkles. She’s aged a lot in the few weeks since your husbands death and you can see it’s taken a toll on her health.
She is faced with a dark future, childless, alone and helpless. She would be lonely and helpless and destitute in Bethlehem.
You decide to go with her. It is no easy decision for you know you will miss your family, but your mother-in-law needs you. She has no one.
If you go with her, you know that you will lose all hope of a future, that you will be parted from your people, and you will have to give up all worldly prospects. A life of poverty and a life of a stranger in a strange land. But even so, you decide to remain loyal and faithful to your mother-in-law. And your decision is still the same, to remain with her.
The enormity of your sacrifice looms before you, urging you not to forsake it. Rivers of tears flow down your cheeks, but you do it. You have decided, and your decision is final.
You kneel down in the dust at her feet and you whisper through your tears, “Entreat me not to leave you, or to return 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.”*
There is such ardor and earnestness about those words, such resolution and calmness, as to lift them far above the sphere of mere natural affection or sense of duty. They intimate the deliberate choice of a heart which belongs in the first place to Jehovah, the God of Israel, and which has learned to count all things but loss for the excellency of this knowledge. BHOTV3
As you place yourself in Ruth’s shoes, you realize how great her sacrifice was. She could have returned to her family, but out of love and devotion for her mother-in-law and for the Israelite's God, she chose to be loyal and faithful.
We all have things we are called to sacrifice. Some of us may not have to sacrifice as much as Ruth did, but in everyone’s life there are things near and dear to us that we are called to sacrifice. Nobody said it would be easy, in fact, it’s usually the opposite. But God will be with us and He will help us.
The journey will take her seven-ten days on foot. She is determined to go, and there is nothing you can do to change her mind.
You and your sister-in-law love your mother-in-law so dearly, that you both insist on going with her to help her and to protect her and to keep her company. But weeping, your mother-in-law implores you each to return to your mother’s houses. Her words convey that, if you went with her, you must expect to remain forever homeless and a stranger.
Your sister in-law, with bitter sorrow, tenderly kisses your mother-in-law for the last time, and then she slowly walks down the path in the other direction, hiding her face so that you can’t see the tears that are streaming down her cheeks.
You look at your poor mother-in-law, you note her graying hair and her many wrinkles. She’s aged a lot in the few weeks since your husbands death and you can see it’s taken a toll on her health.
She is faced with a dark future, childless, alone and helpless. She would be lonely and helpless and destitute in Bethlehem.
You decide to go with her. It is no easy decision for you know you will miss your family, but your mother-in-law needs you. She has no one.
If you go with her, you know that you will lose all hope of a future, that you will be parted from your people, and you will have to give up all worldly prospects. A life of poverty and a life of a stranger in a strange land. But even so, you decide to remain loyal and faithful to your mother-in-law. And your decision is still the same, to remain with her.
The enormity of your sacrifice looms before you, urging you not to forsake it. Rivers of tears flow down your cheeks, but you do it. You have decided, and your decision is final.
You kneel down in the dust at her feet and you whisper through your tears, “Entreat me not to leave you, or to return 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.”*
There is such ardor and earnestness about those words, such resolution and calmness, as to lift them far above the sphere of mere natural affection or sense of duty. They intimate the deliberate choice of a heart which belongs in the first place to Jehovah, the God of Israel, and which has learned to count all things but loss for the excellency of this knowledge. BHOTV3
As you place yourself in Ruth’s shoes, you realize how great her sacrifice was. She could have returned to her family, but out of love and devotion for her mother-in-law and for the Israelite's God, she chose to be loyal and faithful.
We all have things we are called to sacrifice. Some of us may not have to sacrifice as much as Ruth did, but in everyone’s life there are things near and dear to us that we are called to sacrifice. Nobody said it would be easy, in fact, it’s usually the opposite. But God will be with us and He will help us.
Christ's object lessons, P. 333 says: As the will of man cooperates with the will of God, it becomes omnipotent. Whatever is to be done at his command may be accomplished in His strength. All His biddings are enablings. If God tell His you that you need to sacrifice something, you can do it. All His biddings are enablings. Isn’t that amazing? The very fact that God told you to do it, means that you can do it!
“With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.” Matthew 19:26
“With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.” Matthew 19:26
Hannah Evert
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