I'm not leaving...

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Ruth 1:16-17

But Ruth said:

“Entreat me not to leave you,

Or to turn back from following after you;

For wherever you go, I will go;

And wherever you lodge, I will lodge;

Your people shall be my people,

And your God, my God.

17 Where you die, I will die,

And there will I be buried.

The Lord do so to me, and more also,

If anything but death parts you and me.”

I love this popular passage. I've seen it used so many times, people use it for weddings, in letters to their beloved. I think it's sweet, beautiful. What I find to be even more beautiful is that Ruth is pledging her love, her companionship, her loyalty to her mother in law. Not her husband, not her betrothed. She's not pledging to a hopeful future of marriage/blessings of children/life beginning Because Ruth had that, and she lost it when she was widowed. She must have had a fairly good marriage if she chose to stay with Naomi after she's widowed. Especially after Naomi blesses her and tells her to leave. To go and live her own life. Naomi knows that both Orpah and Ruth can start again, remarry. But Naomi, being widowed and her sons passing also knows that she's older, she even says 

“Return home, my daughters. Why would you come with me? Am I going to have any more sons, who could become your husbands?"

But Ruth stays. Not because she sees blessings for herself, a future of any prosperity, love and belonging to someone as their wife. Why does she stay? Her love for her husband? Naomi? I don't know exactly why. But I do know this-

James 1:27 Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. 

Ruth may not have known these words, but her heart was pure in this. Nothing to be gained from it. It looked bleak. Ruth LOVED. Selflessly. We are called to love. Love isn't painful, but I'll tell you what is- dying to self. Putting other's needs above your own. Once you can do that, it's different. God restores and replenishes. Overflows our cups so that we can continue to pour into others.

I have struggled with this more often than not. Dying to self. Loving selflessly. Widows, orphans, neighbors, family. I'm not perfect, but that's not a cop out either. It just reminds me to continue running the race.