October 5

Where Honor Is Due (Day 3)

The Lord watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked. –Psalm 146:9

Ruth was tired. It had been a long night. Heck, it had been a long past few years. It was just her mother-in-law, Naomi, and her sister-in-law, Orpah, now. Their three husbands were dead. There’s famine in Ruth’s native Moab, and it’s time to make a move. After a restless night, they set off for Naomi’s home town: Bethlehem. Then something happens along the road. Naomi changes her mind; her daughters-in-law are better off staying home, in their country, and finding new husbands, she says. Orpah agrees and heads back to Moab.

Ruth’s response, though, changes the trajectory of her life—and lays down the tracks for the lineage of both King David and Jesus Himself. She tells tired and burned out Naomi:

Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me. ––Ruth 1:16-17

Ruth operates from her position as a child of God, while Naomi is operating out of her condition as a poor, tired widow. When we function in position, we gain margin—emotionally, spiritually. Ruth had the margin to see the situation as God saw it: a new pathway to fulfilling His destiny for her. That is why Ruth could choose Naomi despite all the negative conditions. Ruth has zero material prospects: In ancient Israel, to be a widowed, shekel-less foreigner typically meant you were an outcast in society. But Ruth sees through spiritual lenses that focus on her God rather than her goods.

Ruth teaches us how to honor those who perhaps have not honored us. How? By seeing them positionally as God sees them, rather than seeing them conditionally through our emotional/human lenses. David did it with Saul. Jesus did it with Peter.

Is it tough to take the actions of honor—respect, patience, deference? It can be, especially when there’s zero reciprocity. So we take a deep breath, surrender the situation to God, and then choose the “high road” of honor. That’s God’s way. What the world see as conditional weakness, the Father deems positional strength.

Father, help me accept people for who they are in You, rather than how I see them.