Who Hopes She Is Making The Right Choices

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.

THE DRIVE TO CALIFORNIA WITH everything we owned was longer than I had anticipated. As mile after mile passed, I hoped we had heard God clearly. I kept hoping we had made the right choice to move.

In Scripture we read about another woman, Ruth, who made the bold decision to leave her home behind. Do you know her story? Ruth grew up in Moab. During a famine in Israel, an Israelite couple, Elimelek and Naomi, emigrated to her country with their two sons. Ruth married one son, and another Moabite woman, Orpah, married the other. Sadly, Elimelek and both of his sons passed away, and the three women had to decide what to do next.

Upon hearing that the famine in Israel had ended, Naomi decided to return home. She released each of her daughters-in-law to return to her mother’s house to marry a different man. Orpah decided to return to her people, but Ruth insisted on staying with 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.”

I often wonder if Ruth ever questioned her decision to leave the land she had known her whole life to go on this journey to Judea with her mother-in-law. There was no guarantee that Ruth would find another husband to help them both live. They had no real plan. But God did.

The women were following the Lord’s leading, traveling mile after mile. What neither knew was that they were walking toward the greatest adventure in God’s plan. Ruth would marry a man named Boaz and would give birth to a son. This son’s descendant would be our very Savior, Jesus the Messiah.

I picture this young woman of foreign descent walking many miles on a dusty road in the Middle East because of her decision to follow her mother-in-law and let her mother-in-law’s God be her God. As a result, Ruth became one of the few women listed in the lineage of our Lord.

Momma, sometimes you can’t see the impact or importance of the decisions you make. But sometimes those decisions count for eternity, not just for you and for your family. After all, Ruth’s decision was tied to salvation for the world. You may not always be sure you’ve made the right decision, but the Lord is with you and guiding you toward your destiny.

Tonight we pray for the momma who hopes she is making the right choices. Lord, there are so many different roads to take and decisions to make. Rarely does she feel 100 percent confident when she chooses. Tonight she needs You to reassure her that she’s on the right path and that You’re the One guiding her. She hasn’t missed it. She hasn’t taken a wrong turn. She hasn’t made it here by accident. She might have felt uncertain when she moved in this direction, but You haven’t wavered. You are the voice she has been following, and it’s all going to turn out okay. Give her peace tonight.

We ask in Jesus’s name, amen.

Lord, please continue guiding me on my journey to . . .