about the two h's

I know that as a Christian woman it's sort of cliche to say that Ruth is one of my favorite people in the bible.  But, it's true and I don't care.  I also don't care that sometimes I daydream about the two of us (Ruth & I, of course) just hanging out in Heaven, wearing matching pajamas or something and eating ice cream and talking about our feelings.  One day....

ANYWAY - Ruth rules.  She's amazing.  I love her story.  I love her character.  I love her history and her past and the path that her life took because of God.

Sparknotes version is that Ruth did not know the Lord . She was a Moabite, meaning she had a pretty pagan, ungodly background.  But then this family moves to her town, a family that knew the Lord but had left his land of blessing, and Ruth ends up marrying one of the two sons.  Tragically, her husband, his brother, and his father all die, leaving Ruth with a choice - she can either remain in her homeland, or she can go with her mother-in-law, Naomi, back to the land of Judah.  At a moment of beautiful, bold, courageous trust and remarkable conversion, she chooses to follow Naomi - she chooses to follow the Lord into a new land and new life.  And what happens because of that decision is remarkable in every sense.

I was laying in bed last night and for some reason thinking about Ruth's story and it struck me that Ruth does two things which I've never been able to emulate successfully: she walks a perfect tightrope line between her past and her future.

I have two tendencies - one is to get so caught in retrospective reflection about my past that I'm totally unable to have excitement for the future.  The other is to get SO excited for the future that I forget what was valuable from my past.  Neither extreme is ever all that helpful, and both tend to leave me feeling disappointed in one way or another.

But I think about Ruth, and how she tragically lost the man she loved, and as I pick apart her choices and analyze her character, I see two things she did very well: she honored her past, and she had hope for her future.

By choosing to follow Naomi, she honors the family she had joined in the past.  She honors the little glimpses of God that her husband had given her, and she honors the changes of her heart that the Lord had provided throughout her marriage.  She honors herself as a woman who has been transformed because of her history.

And by making that incredibly scary decision of entering a new land of strangers where she would be unwanted and foreign, she displays evidence of an incredible hope.  Even though she's just starting to know who God is, she has hope that he has a great story in the works for her.

The two h's - honor, and hope.

It wasn't easy for her, I'm sure, to balance between the two.  But it's encouraging that it's possible.  And I can't wait until my slumber parties with her in Heaven to tell her thanks for teaching me to be a woman who longs for both of those things in my life.


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ps. Mars Hill Church has a really remarkable sermon series on Ruth (that's where the top video is from); I 100% recommend it.  When I went through it two years ago I learned a ton and I find myself going back to it over and over again.