The start of a new year often comes with hopes and dreams of what this year may hold. Hopes that things may finally get better, that this situation may finally change, that life will be improved, promises will be fulfilled, and new adventures will be lived.
This year, too, I am hoping for a brighter future, in many ways.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. As I walk with the Lord, I always have the promise of a bright future before me.
But that future, and the path that leads there, may not look the way I expect.
And the choices that lead me there may not be the choices this world would tell me to make.
The story of Ruth in the Bible challenges my view of that.
We get to know Ruth in the beginning of the story as a young widow, childless, poor. She lives with her mother-in-law, who testifies that the hand of the Lord is against her, and who calls herself bitter.
Her mother-in-law, Naomi, then decides to go back to her homeland, a land foreign to Ruth. Naomi asks Ruth not to come with her, but instead asks her to stay back in her country, go back to her mother’s house, and find a husband for herself. (You can read it all in the first book of Ruth).
This is the way to a brighter future, it seems. And a young woman like Ruth should try and build a life for herself. It all makes sense, doesn’t it?
But Ruth makes a very different choice.
Instead of choosing the path with the greatest likelihood of prosperity, she chooses a path that likely leads to continued widowhood, childlessness, barrenness, poverty, and that will have her be a foreigner in a land where people particularly dislike her people.
What makes a woman forefeit her entire future and choose to follow a elderly widow who describes herself as bitter and empty?
Honestly, if I’d be given the choice, I have to admit I would likely choose myself. I am not sure if I would have it in me to give up my greatest hope for a brighter future, simply to love an elderly, bitter woman.
But that is exactly what Ruth did.
Ruth, for some reason, insists on going with Naomi.
In that moment, Ruth chooses to love Naomi selflessly, pouring her entire future out, and joining Naomi in her emptiness.
Ruth didn’t choose that path, thinking that there may be a great turnaround at some point. She did not have great promises from the Lord. She did not have a job with a great salary lined up, or even the possibility of such a thing. At least not that we know of.
The only thing she would have, if she went with Naomi, is Naomi herself: The company of a bitter, elderly woman.
That is the circumstances in which Ruth chooses to follow Naomi into a land she has never seen, and to a people she does not know.
Ruth poured herself into Naomi.
She is a picture of self-giving love.
She chose to love Naomi, even though Naomi’s emptiness promised no return on her investment. And yet, she insisted on accompanying Naomi.
Ruth chose to enter Naomi’s emptiness, filling her loneliness with her very own presence, at the cost of everything.
At the start of this new year, I ask myself: am I willing to pour myself out to loving others, even if it costs me everything? Am I willing to be faithful, even if my future looks grim? Am I willing to obey, and walk the lesser road, even if there is no promise that things may ever turn around?
Am I willing to be a companion to the least of these, to the bitter, the empty, the broken, the hurting? Even if I will never get anything in return?
Ruth was willing to do that.
Ruth chose Naomi.
Ruth chose to selflessly love.
And as she chose selfless love, Love Himself chose her, and turned her story around in ways she could have never hoped or dreamed.
Love took her, and weaved her into the narrative of the greatest story ever told, making her an ancestor to the One who poured Himself, His all in all, out – for all of us.
This year, as I hope for a brighter future, am I willing to forfeit it in the name of the One who chose me before I ever chose Him, to pour myself out in love even if I never get anything in return?
This year, am I willing to pour myself out in self-giving love, without the hope of promises fulfilled?
I pray that the Lord will give me the grace to do just that.
