Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“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. 17Where 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!”
NL Daily Devotion for Sunday, May 31, 2026
by Madison Johnston, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: God holds onto us in our pain, our vulnerability, our hunger, and our uncertainty. And because of that, we have endless permission to grow.
Ruth is a book all about how hesed—the steadfast, unending love of God—speaks to us, animates us and shapes us throughout our lives. Hesed is on full display here in Chapter 1, considered by most biblical scholars to be the explanation behind why Ruth chooses to cling to her mother-in-law.
It seems that Ruth has truly internalized the faith of the family she married into, and that the thought of disconnecting from it is worse than anything that her already-significant trauma could bring. It seems that Naomi has modeled God’s hesed for Ruth in their life together so far, and that Ruth is taking this opportunity to model it back.
A legitimate and genuinely beautiful preaching path to take this week is to center around the idea of Ruth having been transformed in the most foundational ways by the unending, unconditional love of our Creator. When have you witnessed this kind of transformation? When might you have been a part of it? Who are the “Naomi”s in your life? The “Ruth”s?
If we take that preaching path, though, we have to be careful not to depend on the fallacy of contrast between Ruth’s choice and Orpah’s. Orpah disappears in the biblical narrative after she decides to return to Moab, which means that it’s easy to make her a rhetorical tool in the story—to reduce her to something that shows the familiarity, conventionality and safety that Ruth might have pursued as opposed to the ambiguity, vulnerability and risk that she ultimately embraced.
But Orpah is a whole, complex person with her own story. It would be silly of us to assume that a return to Moab would actually have been easy for her. She was still widowed. She was still hungry. She had lived for a long period of time in a different way and with a different culture from the people who raised her. It’s worth noting, too, that Orpah would likely have experienced Naomi’s hesed from the exact same vantage point as Ruth did! From the position of “daughter in law.” Why would we assume that the unending, unconditional love of our Creator wouldn’t have changed Orpah’s heart just like it did Ruth’s?
Perhaps a different preaching path we could take is one of imagination. One of speculation. It’s very unlikely that Orpah stayed static in her identity as she departed from her sister- and mother-in-law. Perhaps we could guide our congregations in wondering: How did God’s provision guide Orpah to make her ultimate decision? What might Moabite reentry have looked like for her? Who, and how, would Orpah love differently upon getting home, as another witness to God’s hesed?
This story shows us that the miracle of a life following the cross is the miracle of change itself. On our own, we are not capable of true evolution. But held and empowered by God’s presence—bolstered and protected by God’s abiding love—we can experience newness day to day. Evolution moment to moment.
In connecting this story with modern-day examples and allegories, it’s hard not to gravitate toward the characters of Elpheba and Galinda in Wicked. Both love magic, and want to do good with it. Both share a space and a life for a significant period of time. They are equally convicted and equally faithful, but ultimately, circumstances call each one to a different future.
In one of the last songs of the show, Elpheba and Galinda sing to each other:
“I’ve heard it said that people come into our lives for a reason, bringing something we must learn / And we are led to those who help us most to grow if we let them / And we help them in return. Well I don’t know if I believe that’s true / But I know I’m who I am today because I knew you. / And because I knew you, I have been changed for good.”
