God of the Widow, God of the Bride

I just finished reading the book of Ruth with my wife, and this morning in prayer as I wrestled with God over my personal disappointments and anxious thoughts about dreams that might never come true, Ruth’s story flooded my mind. 

Ruth was a woman of three stories — crushing loss, thrilling redemption, and unknown participation in a secret messianic backstory. And God — stop and ponder this — is the God of all three stories.

The God of Ruth’s redemption is the God of her widowhood. The God planning a quiet messianic hope—somehow—is the God of her widowhood. In the darkness, he was no less present than in the day of hope.

Let this realization be a balm for your disappointments from the past and your worries about the future. God is at work in the most painful parts of your story just as much as he is at work on the night of your engagement or the birth of your first child. In all of this, God — the God of the widow and the God of the bride — is at work. 

Crushing Loss

“In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons. The name of the man was Elimelech and the name of his wife Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. They were Ephrathites from Bethlehem in Judah. They went into the country of Moab and remained there. But Elimelech, the husband of Naomi, died, and she was left with her two sons. These took Moabite wives; the name of the one was Orpah and the name of the other Ruth. They lived there about ten years, and both Mahlon and Chilion died, so that the woman was left without her two sons and her husband.” 

Ruth 1:1–4

Th opening paragraph of the book of Ruth is complete with three deaths — which imply three funerals, three crying women, and three strong temptations to lose all semblance of faith in the goodness of God.

For Ruth, the past had become a trail of tears, and the future was uncertain, if not tilted in the direction of more pain. As an ancient woman with no male support, she had lost her strongest source of earthly protection.

Redemption

After returning to Bethlehem with her mother-in-law Naomi, Ruth gleans grain left behind by reapers as they harvested fields of a man named Boaz. (If the story of Ruth had been written a few millennia later, one might see a dark symbolism in Ruth and Naomi’s living off whatever the Reaper left behind.) But it’s here in the depths of poverty that light begins to break through the cracks in Ruth’s story, when Boaz, a relative of Naomi’s late husband, shows her a special kindness, ensuring her protection and provision, causing Naomi to suggest that maybe — just maybe — Boaz could marry Ruth.

The rest, as they say, is history. Ruth and Boaz marry, and she conceives a son. The story ends happily, with the townswomen crowded around Naomi and her unlikely grandson, Obed, saying:

“Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day without a redeemer, and may his name be renowned in Israel! He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age, for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has given birth to him.”

Ruth 4:14-15

A Secret Backstory

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the most important thing in the book of Ruth is the story of sorrow and redemption in the lives of Ruth and Naomi. Yet, it’s something at the end of the book—so spatially insignificant as to almost be a postscript — that imbues the story with wondrous depth:

Then Naomi took the child and laid him on her lap and became his nurse. And the women of the neighborhood gave him a name, saying, “A son has been born to Naomi.” They named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David.

Ruth 4:16–17

The baby at the end of the story is the grandfather of King David, and it’s to King David that God makes a promise—a promise that the Messiah will come from his lineage. And when you come to the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel, there she is: Ruth.

This is not a story primarily about a deafeningly loud comeback to silence all your worries about what tomorrow may hold. No, this story—and the redemptive narrative of Scripture — is about a quiet messianic hope you can rest in during seasons of grief, and, as God wills, moments of redemption. 

Our Great Redemption

The God of the widow and the God of the bride is the God who is orchestrating a greater redemption than any one (or two or three) of our personal stories could contain — a story that will, in the end, envelop each of the stories of those who want to be included in the story of the Messiah. And that story will see all widows to a new wedding day.

While you, like Ruth, are likely a man or woman of many stories — some of crushing loss and some of redemption — remember that your God is the God of every season. He has not forgotten you. He is working.