Wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God.
Ruth 1:16
When life looks like it’s over, when the one you love is gone and you have nowhere to go, what do you do? Curl up and die? Or get up and get going? For Ruth the answer was obvious: she would get up and get going. Her destiny was tied to her husband’s mother, and no matter how hard it would be, she would not walk away. So instead of staying home to be with her family, where things were familiar and safe, she decided to leave Moab with Naomi. This trip would have been scary. How would they survive? What would they do? But Ruth accepted Naomi and her God as her own and didn’t look back. This confidence in a God she barely knew and willingness to do whatever her mother-in-law asked her to do gave Ruth a brand-new life.
When all looks lost, when your dreams have been destroyed and you wonder what to do next, your eyes are probably going to be on what you’ve lost, but the only way to move forward is to trust in the God who will never let you down. You are going to face times in your life when doing the right thing seems like a waste of time and following God rather than following your feelings seems impossible, but you have to find the strength to reject your feelings and move on in faith, even if that faith feels far less convincing than your emotions. Ruth is a good example of a girl who fearlessly did what she had to do even though she didn’t know what would happen next. Now her name is written for all to remember as being an ancestor of Jesse and a part of the root of David, which is the lineage of Christ himself (see Ruth 4:13–22; Matt. 1:5). You never know what your pain will give way to, but you can know that something good is coming around the bend when you put your faith in the God who never fails.