Unwavering Loyalty

“But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where 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. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.”” — Ruth 1:16-17

These words were spoken by Ruth, the Moabite woman who became a part of Jesus’ lineage, to her mother-in-law after many deaths that had led the second woman to desire a return to her hometown. 

Naomi, the mother-in-law, having renamed herself Mara after the bitterness of soul that encapsulated her experience after losing her husband and two sons, had advised her two daughter-in-laws to go back to their gods and their people, in their lands. One, Orpah, listened and left, while the other, Ruth, spoke with fierce, unwavering loyalty, pledging her allegiance to Naomi’s God, to her late husband’s mother and her people. 

This kind of loyalty and allegiance makes no sense in a world that encourages women to seek our personal best above the supposed constraints and restraints of family, duty, and God-ordained partnerships. Obligations to communities, churches, and roles in the family and home are discarded in modern worldviews for the opportunities to chase material success, career advancement, and self-oriented achievements. We are decidedly conditioned to order loves in a way that exalts self and denies responsibility, but Ruth shows us a truer way.

This is not to prescribe a particular way of living to all women, as each may be called by God in her season to different things, and each area of stewardship calls for careful respect and deserve a place in rightful order. This is simply to suggest a confrontation to what is demanding our loyalty today, and to whom we are pledging this loyalty and how He is ordering our steps thereafter.

Ruth chose her husband’s way, because she had committed to a family with him, having left her family of origin and cleaved to her husband. But that’s not the full story — she chose to honor her late husband, but even truer and deeper, she chose to follow the God of the universe and leave behind the idols of her previous heritage.

“She does him good and not harm, all the days of her life.” — Proverbs 31:12

The above words are the verse from Proverbs chapter 31 that I had chosen to represent and describe the character of Ruth. Though her husband had passed, this woman had inadvertently done him good, by her loyalty to his God, the living God, and by her care for her mother-in-law. Though she had no husband to answer to, she chose for all the days of her life to do good to her late husband by submitting to YHWH, the God who created them both and who had joined them together in holy matrimony.

The Lord surely blessed Ruth and honored her obedience. Her fruitfulness in working in the fields of Boaz and later marriage to the kinsman redeemer continued a lineage which led to the birth of Jesus Christ, our true Redeemer and the Savior of mankind.

What can our simple obedience, through our unwavering loyalty to God, do today? Imagine the ripple effects that one word of encouragement, one moment of discipleship, one whispered prayer, can have on generations into the future. What wonder, what marvel, that our loyalty to God bears fruit that multiplies to lands we cannot yet see and can barely conceptualize?

I’m sure that Ruth had not imagined her choice to stay with her mother-in-law to extend to the saving grace of all humanity through all time - the man Jesus Christ. It was simply her heart of faith and decisiveness toward loyalty that anchored her as a woman worth her own book in the Bible, integral to the storyline of redemption and love woven by our Creator.

So, in reflection, where can you choose to be loyal to the God you serve, today? 

Let us pray.

Heavenly Father, 

You see our fickleness, our tendencies to sway and waver based on changing moods and feelings, new information and persuasions. Would you root our hearts in the unchanging hope of Jesus Christ today, and fashion our minds, hands and feet to work toward that which will never fade or falter for all eternity? 

Teach us to set our minds on things above, and not things on earth. Train us to love You with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, to love our neighbours as ourselves. Above all, make us women like Ruth who chose to be unwaveringly loyal to You. 

Illuminate to us one thing we can be loyal to You in today, Lord, and enable us to be faithful in the little You’ve entrusted us, that we may be faithful in much. To Your glory alone.

In Jesus’ holy, precious name, 

Amen.

As we await His return…

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