People

“Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God.”  Ruth 1:16

People – Would you volunteer to give up your rights of citizenship in order to be a comfort to an old woman who had no support and an uncertain future?  Would you be ready to leave your hometown and your country, your family and friends just because you were worried about what might happen to someone else?  Would you give up the life you know to be support to someone who had nothing to offer?

Ruth had options.  Naomi, her mother-in-law, told her, “Go back home.  Find another husband.  Live the good life.  You deserve it.  I can’t offer you anything, so leave.”  It was the truth.  Naomi, too old to marry, faced poverty, isolation and vulnerability.  Ruth could have left with her sister.  She could have gone where the grass looked greener.  No one would have blamed her at all.

But Ruth knew the meaning of agape love long before the word found its way into the New Testament.  Ruth not only refused to leave Naomi, she deliberately gave up her rights to become what Naomi needed most: family. 

The Hebrew sentence is powerfully emphatic:  Your people my people.  Your God my God.  A voluntary transfer of identity.  I am no longer my own person.  From now on, I belong to your tribe and I serve your God.  The Old Testament hardly contains a more powerful statement of commitment.

“People” is the Hebrew word ‘am.  Used more than 1900 times, it designates all kinds of groups, from the human race to the smallest tribe.  But Ruth is not interested in any group except the one of her mother-in-law.  These are the people who matter to her.  And they matter because Ruth loved Naomi.  She gave up all that she could have had because she loved this old woman.  It’s a picture worth remembering.

Ruth is described as “clinging” to Naomi.  When you decided to give up your own rights and your world citizenship in order to identify with the tribe of Jesus, was it because you loved Him so much you would not let Him go?  Did you say to Him, “Your people, my people “?  If Jesus’ people are now your people, what does that say about how you should treat them?  Is your devotion to His people like your devotion to Him?