Tough Decisions
Author: Pastor Mike Gutzler
This past week we had the pleasure of reading a section from the book of Ruth. If you have not read the book of Ruth lately definitely give it another read.
Really quickly, Naomi is the mother of two sons who are forced to move from their homeland due to famine in the region. In the foreign land, her husband dies, the sons marry local women, and then they die too. When Naomi hears the famine is gone, she decides to move back. At that point she tells her daughters-in-law to go back to their homes of origin. One daughter-in-law, Orpah, decides to go home while the other daughter-in-law, Ruth, decides to stay and says probably the most important line from the text: "Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die—there will I be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you!"
The focus of this text is the commitment Ruth has to her mother-in-law. Both are incredibly vulnerable, but Ruth is committed no matter what.
In our own lives, we make tough decisions on a regular basis. Do we stay or do we go? Do we let go or do we hold tight? No matter the decision we make, it can often be the wrong one from some perspective. With that said, no matter what decision we make we have one certainty, that God is with us before, during and after every decision. God walks with us after the good one and especially after the bad ones. This is important here, especially today.
There was an article that came out over the weekend called: Why You Never See Your Friends Anymore. The author, who also wrote a book about the importance of sabbath, articulate correctly that the reason we don’t seek out friends anymore is because we all live on different schedules. Since the 9 to 5 is a thing of the past, and since we work all hours of the day and weekend, a moment of catching up and spending time together is no longer a reality.
I bring this article to your attention because I have a sense of gratitude about the community of faith. With all of the crazy schedules, all of the possibilities and options, God still calls us together to see the world differently and affirm that God walks with us every step of this rough and rocky path called life.
Who could have guessed what would have happened for Naomi or Ruth if they made a different decision. We celebrate their lives today, because if they did not stick together, then we would not have this section from the genealogy of Jesus from the gospel of Matthew: “and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of King David.”