Lectio Divina from the Jesse Tree
RUTH & NAOMI – Day 12 🌾
Ruth 1:1-8
“A Man from Bethlehem left home with his wife.”
There’s a saying that ‘mama doesn’t know what mama doesn’t know, until she knows it.’ I don’t think I fully began to understand the beauty of Ruth and Naomi’s relationship until I was a mother myself and also a daughter-in-law at the same time. It wasn’t until the right circumstances and my experience aligned that the thought was able to pierce me: How much Naomi’s story is like Mary’s!
She left her home to become a foreigner in a strange land, where people worshipped other gods, and there they lived for nearly a decade of their lives. Naomi made a home, raised a family, and fell in love with the women who married her sons, even though they were not from among their people. How else could such strangers have such a devotion to her, through tears in their eyes, that they could not leave her if she had not herself become a mother to them.
“Go back each of you to your mother’s house.”
I wonder if Mary thought of Naomi on her journey to Egypt. How often had she heard it told the story of Ruth. How did she marvel at the child she had birthed who now carried Ruth’s love in his heart and in his blood. Did she ponder what made Ruth so devoted to Naomi. Did she wonder if she would meet a Ruth of her own? And when she was old, did Naomi’s wisdom bring her consolation as she remembered Ruth once more.
“Have I other sons of my womb who could become your husbands?”
How much I marvel at the wisdom of the widowed. How keenly many know themselves and the bitterness that makes them weep. How wisely they instruct the young. Naomi’s words echo like a faint shadow as the image of Mary saying near similar words to the disciples who followed after her when her own son died sweep hauntingly throughout Ruth’s story.
“My lot is too bitter for you.”
Mary, did you know the bitterness of Naomi?
“Ruth clung to her.”
As did John, as do I. How about you?
“Wherever you go I will go,
Wherever you lodge I will lodge.
Your people shall be my people
And your God, my God”
