Our text today is from the Book of Ruth, and if you haven't read the story, I'd encourage you to do so in the coming week. Ruth lived during difficult times, with much war and famine. Somewhere around 1250 B.C., she had married the son of immigrants who had traveled to her country because life was suppose to be better there. Her mother-in-law was a widow named Naomi. Ruth's sister Orpha also married one of Naomi's sons.

Life was good for a time, yet her husband and her sister's husband died leaving their family with no means of support. Naomi, hearing that the economy had improved in her country, decided to return home. At first, she encouraged her daughter-in-laws to return to their own families and seek other husbands among the Moabites. But Ruth refuses to be separated from Naomi. She says, "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 anything but death separates you and me." When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her."

Ruth is willing to give up everything to follow Naomi; her culture, her gods, the security of her family in order to follow Naomi into a strange land where the future is uncertain. They return to Naomi's home with nothing but each other.

Naomi is returning without wealth, without her husband, and without her sons. She says, "I went away full, but the LORD has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The LORD has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me."

Upon returning, Naomi wishes to be called "Mara", which means "Bitter". She returns
home from this failed immigration empty handed, thinking her life a failure.

This is not the way the story was suppose to go, her husband was to prosper, and her sons find wives and bear many grandchildren for Naomi, they were to prosper and make a new home surrounded by new security and a blossoming family. Naomi envisioned dying an old woman, surrounded by a growing family, not returning as a widow and childless. Her life looks like complete bitterness and failure, however not completely empty, since Naomi returns with Ruth!

What a tragic picture is painted in today's text. Two widows; Ruth, some nameless foreign woman, following a bitter old woman home to Bethlehem.

Bethlehem; you know that town. The place where two people more people some 1200 years later would be forced to return to as well. Returning to Bethlehem, not because they wanted to, but because they were caught up in a circumstances which they also did not understand at the time. We know that Mary and Joseph were their names, descendants of this small town. They would, of course, give birth to Jesus.

If you look at the genealogy of Jesus you'll find something amazing. Amid all the male names; amid Abraham, Jacob and Judah; amid David Solomon, and Mannasseh, you'll find the name "Ruth". This foreigner who loved Naomi enough to give up everything would become the foremother of Jesus Christ, 1200 years later. This mother of faith, who chose to embrace Naomi and her foreign God, would leave her life behind and be caught up in the life and story of the Living God. She would be the mother of kings, and eventually even the king of kings. She, who gave up so much for Naomi, would be the mother of the One who would give up everything for all of us. In his life too, what at first looked like death and failure; three days later became new life for him and for the world. Give thanks to God for unseen hope. AMEN.