Unlikely Companions on the Journey

“Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.”

But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.

So the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem.
- Ruth 1:15-19

Naomi and her two daughters-in-law had all lost their husbands. Naomi was about to return, poor and destitute, to her homeland. She tried to send her daughters-in-law back to their home country, but one of them would not go. Ruth decided that instead of returning to her own people that she would join Naomi on pilgrimage to a land Ruth had never been to and where she would be a mere immigrant with no rights. And yet she went.

Sometimes our companions for the journey are not the ones we would have expected. Naomi found a rare and precious companion in Ruth - and vice versa. They were an unlikely pair - one old and one young, one Jewish and one Moabite - and yet their companionship was what turned the tables on their circumstance. They provided to each other things that the other could not have had on their own.

Who are you companions on the spiritual journey? Perhaps it would be helpful to keep an eye open for the unlikely ones, the ones you may not have realized have been a real gift to you because they are so different from you. Take some time to name them and to give thanks for them.