Then they wept aloud again. Orpah kissed her mother-in-law,
but Ruth clung to her.
15 So she said, “See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.”
16 But Ruth said,
“Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you!
Where you go, I will go;
where you lodge, I will lodge;
your people shall be my people,
and your God my God.
17 Where you die, I will die—
there will I be buried.
May the Lord do thus and so to me,
and more as well,
if even death parts me from you!”
When Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her,
she said no more to her.
Before Christmas, I took my father to a hospital for a hip replacement and had to spend the night in Maine, waiting for his recovery. Two of my college friends lived nearby and after years of trying to get together, we gathered around a fire pit at a local restaurant.
As mothers, it’s easy to let distant friendships go, as we find our lives and schedules subject to the changing demands of our children. Sitting around the fire, we talked late into the evening, catching each other up on the last twenty years, sharing joys and sorrows, particularly around the mental health challenges of our children during the Pandemic or about our worries for our aging parents.
The joy I experienced in that time with dear friends was something I desperately missed over the past year. Despite the years that pass, the strength and goodwill of friendship endures, offering a welcome reprieve from the difficulties of the present.
“Loving Kindness” or hesed in the Hebrew Bible is used often to describe the qualities of God or meaningful relationships between one person to another. The Book of Ruth epitomizes hesed in the friendship between Ruth and Naomi. As the nation of Moab grapples with famine, despair, and death, Naomi loses her two sons and husband.
The custom in Moab required both daughter-in-laws to return to their own kin, leaving their mother-in-law, Naomi, alone. Determined to give her daughter-in-laws a chance at a second family, Naomi demands they return to their own people, marry, and start another family. But in a moving display of hesed, Ruth adamantly refuses, declaring, “Do not press me to leave you or turn my back from following you. Where you go, I will go, where you lodge, I will lodge, your people will be my people, your God will be my God.”
In this Biblical story, we are reminded that the indomitable bonds of friendships give us the strength to continue on, even in the midst of hardship. Pay attention to the way hesed emerges in your daily life; where have you received the gift of loving kindness or hesed when you’ve really needed it this winter? Who in your life might need hesed from you? In the midst of difficult times, Ruth reminds us to cherish the friendships and meaningful relationships in our lives and refuse to let them go.
--The Rev. Katie Solter
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