No Turning Back
No Turning Back
Ruth 1:8 & 14
But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go, return each of you to her mother’s house. …” Then they lifted up their voices and wept again. And Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.
The poetic force of this dichotomous imagery, of Orpah kissing Naomi while Ruth clings to her, is almost too profound a picture for words. Pope Julius II should’ve commissioned Michelangelo to paint a fresco of these juxtaposing poses on the Sistine Chapel. I can see it now: a hooded figure with back turned, standing as a pillar in the center, flanked by two gestures. One is the gesture of a kiss on the cheek with an eye looking backward, and the other is the gesture of a face buried in the hooded figure’s feet with hands holding fast. Oh, that the Renaissance painters had portrayed that profound imagery rather than staining church walls with scenes of nasty little devils jabbing sinners with their pitchforks! Nevertheless, it’s a picture etched in this divinely inspired Book, worthy of our deepest meditation, because it gives form to our freewill and begs the question: which will you choose?
Israel has been stuck for generations between two worlds, between the godless green hills of Moab where men do whatever seems right in their own eyes, and the hallowed hills of Jehovah’s pastureland where rain and harvest are contingent on spiritual fruitfulness. Oh, how the people, like Orpah here, have wept and cried out in their oppression. Oh, how they’ve kissed the feet of Moses and Gideon and Jephthah when their need was great. Oh, but they always kept an eye behind them, didn’t they? Like Lot’s wife, all the sentimentality and ceremony didn’t keep them from longing for home away from the Promised Land. Nevertheless, some, like Ruth, clung to Providence. Men like Joshua who kept the faith throughout his life, and Deborah who spoke the words of God honorably, and Caleb who took down the pagan giants in the backwoods. There was no goodbye kiss in their weeping. There was no look backward in their longing. They were all in.
May the posture of our own allegiance to Christ today resemble Ruth’s and not Orpah’s. May our faith be marked by arms clutched around our Savior’s feet, not by a halfhearted kiss with an eye over our shoulder.