Under His Wings

The Story

Naomi had lost everything. Famine had driven her family from Bethlehem to the land of Moab, and there her husband died. Then both of her sons died too. She decided to go home, and she told her two widowed daughters-in-law to stay in Moab and start over.

One of them, Orpah, kissed her goodbye. But the other, Ruth, refused to leave. “Whither thou goest, I will go,” she said. “Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.”

So two widows walked back into Bethlehem with nothing. Naomi was so bitter she told everyone to stop calling her Naomi, which means pleasant. “Call me Mara,” she said, which means bitter.

It was the beginning of the barley harvest. To keep them from starving, Ruth went out to the fields to glean, picking up the leftover grain the harvesters dropped, the way the law allowed the poor to do. The Bible says she “happened” to come to a field that belonged to a man named Boaz, a relative of Naomi’s husband.

Boaz noticed her. He had heard how she had left her own land to care for Naomi. He told her to stay in his field, drink from his water, and eat with his workers. Then he quietly told his men to drop extra grain on purpose for her to find.

When Ruth came home that night with a huge load of barley, Naomi’s hope began to come back.

Reflection