Where You Go, I Will Go

Ruth 1:16. On the road out of Moab, with Naomi urging her back toward her mother's house, Ruth answers with a vow that has been read at weddings ever since. Where you go, I will go. Your people will be my people. Your God will be my God. It was not spoken at a wedding. It was spoken to a grieving mother-in-law who had nothing to offer her but a hard journey and an uncertain welcome.

That is worth holding onto today. The vow is famous because it is beautiful, but it is beautiful because it cost something. Ruth chose the poorer road, the foreign country, the God she had only heard about through a family that had lost everything. She did not know the ending we know.

Most of the loyalty God asks of us looks like this. Not grand gestures with a crowd watching, but a quiet decision to stay with someone when leaving would be easier and no one would blame you. Ruth's faith was expressed in a direction of travel. Ours usually is too.