Ruth 1:1-21 & 4:13-17
The Rev. Dr. Robert S. Langworthy, preaching
July 26, 2026
A woman thought she’d ruined a recently received gift of a pure white handkerchief after she’d accidentally spilled India ink on it. A friend, however, said, “Give it to me. I can make it as good as new, if not better.” The friend, using that splotch of a permanent stain as the centerpiece of a design, applied more India ink to the handkerchief and fashioned an exquisite, intricate pattern that both hid the spill and turned what at first looked like a spoiled piece of linen into a beautiful masterpiece of a creative person’s artistry.
God loves us, and has a wonderful plan for each of us. But the fulfillment of His wonderful plan can look like a lost cause because God’s given us freedom of choice and our poor choices can seem to ruin our prospects. Yet, when we make poor choices, as we often do, God adjusts His plans in response and opens up another way by which to fulfill His beautiful designs for our lives.
Though not everything in this world goes as God had originally planned, God is wise enough to have an excellent Plan B that can also accomplish what He had intended from the start. He just lays out a different route by which we can reach the same destination.
Once upon a time, a Jewish couple named Naomi and Elimelech lived with their two boys in Israel during the period of the Judges, a time of great instability, with one unreliable leader of the nation following another. To make matters worse, there was a terrible drought so that crops withered in dusty fields and famine stalked the streets. As a result, Naomi and Elimelech decided to do what would have otherwise been unthinkable: they chose to leave the land God had given His chosen people as their own and moved to Moab, a land in which no faithful Jew who respected the law of Moses would ever consider making their home. For Deuteronomy 23:3 commanded them to keep at a distance from the Moabites “even to the tenth generation”.
But apparently as starvation threatened their lives, Naomi and Elimelech lost much of their trust in God and their commitment to keep God’s commandments. So they made the “common-sense” decision to relocate somewhere with more agriculturally favorable weather.
The family settled in Moab and became so embedded in that community that the two Jewish boys married Moabite girls. Then Elimelech died; and a decade later, both the boys did as well. That left behind three widows, two of them young, and the other long in the tooth.
With the death of their men, Moab became an impossible home for the women; for, back then, women economically were entirely dependent on men, without any chance of financial independence apart from prostitution. A woman had no other hope for survival without a husband, a father or a brother to support her.
So Naomi again made a “common-sense” choice. She decided to return to her homeland of Israel, in hopes of finding a male relative who’d take her in.
Naomi urged her two daughters-in-law to stay in Moab. For, as Moabites among Jews, they stood no chance of remarriage; but in Moab, among their own, they’d surely receive marriage proposals sooner or later.
One daughter-in-law saw wisdom in Naomi’s advice, and returned her suitcases to the back of the closet. But the other, Ruth, brushed aside the risks she’d be taking as a stranger residing in a country which she’d never seen before and in which she’d likely be ostracized for her nationality. Despite Naomi’s trying to argue her out of it, Ruth insisted on “clinging” to her mother-in-law and following her into her foreign land. For to Ruth home was wherever Naomi was, to such an extent that Ruth swore to her mother-in-law, “Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge.” She even promised to make Naomi’s people her own people, though she had reason to think they’d not welcome her, and to make Naomi’s God her own God, though Naomi was bitterly accusing her God of “turning against” her.
Ruth’s rash, irrational determination to make a home in Israel with Naomi ended up leading to great blessings for Ruth herself (despite the xenophobia she faced), for Naomi (despite the faith crisis she underwent) and for us (despite our being far removed from their world and maybe unaware of how adaptive and creative God is in His grace).
In Israel, Ruth soon caught the eye and affections of a well-to-do Jewish man named Boaz. Eventually they married and, before long, they brought forth into the world a beautiful, bouncing baby boy.
The neighborhood women, however, seemed to have been less struck by that baby being a gift from God to those proud parents than by his being a gift of God to the faithless grandmother who felt so bitterly betrayed by God that she wanted her name changed from Naomi, meaning in Hebrew “pleasant”, to Mara, meaning “bitter”. The text tells us that they addressed the older Naomi rather than the new mother Ruth when they sang out: “Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day without next-of-kin…he shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age.” That’s why also, after seeing how smitten with the little guy Naomi was once she took him into her bosom and took care of him as his “nurse”, those neighborhood women exclaimed, not that a son has been born to Ruth, but that “a son has been born to Naomi!” – a son who’d turn her life around for the better.
For God, the shortest distance between two points is often not a straight line. God allowed Naomi to make some bad choices, in going to Moab in the first place and then in giving up on her trust in God in the process; but the Lord adjusted and adapted His plans in response to her poor choices, and used them to at last bring her to a place of peace and contentment with Him.
And the God, who always has the big picture and the long-range view in mind, was also working out His good purposes for you and me as He adjusted and adapted to the convoluted road laid out by Naomi with her poor decisions. God makes only the best plans, but even His chosen ones sometimes choose their plans over His. But God is a genius in working with whatever we give Him; and His plan B is always as good as Plan A if not better.
That baby born to Ruth and Boaz became the father of Jesse who became the father of David who became Israel’s greatest king and the forefather of Messiah Jesus, the greatest possible King and the Savior of all, who was proud to call Himself the Son of David.
God gracious purposes for His own cannot be thwarted. Our decisions matter; but, though our bad choices give God little to work with, they can’t prevent Him from accomplishing His good purposes anyway. He’s too merciful, insightful and powerful to let that happen!
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