My God Is King
A closing reflection on the book of Ruth
Some names are questions
wearing the costume of a statement.
My God is King, his father must have said
the day they named him,
never guessing
he would leave the House of Bread hungry,
carry that name into Moab,
and die there
still holding it.
Unanswered.
It was the days
when the judges judged.
There was no king.
Everyone did what was right
in his own eyes.
And somewhere beneath
all that taking,
an old woman
opened her hands.
She had already given Moab
a husband
and two sons.
Two daughters remained.
Naomi kissed them.
Blessed them.
Opened her hands
and offered them
all she had left.
Go.
Orpah wept.
Kissed her.
Went.
Naomi opened her hands again.
Go.
Ruth clung.
Where you go, I will go.
Where you stay, I will stay.
Your people.
My people.
Your God.
My God.
So Naomi turned toward Bethlehem
with Ruth still holding on.
⸻
Empty, she said,
meaning it the way
only the fed-and-then-starved
can mean a word like that—
not the emptiness
of never having had,
but the wider, colder kind:
I went away full.
The LORD has brought me back empty.
And beyond the houses,
barley bent
heavy on its stalks.
⸻
By morning
Ruth was bent too,
behind the reapers,
gathering supper
one fallen stalk at a time.
Then someone noticed her.
Whose young woman is this?
Later, with bread before her
and water she had not drawn,
she looked at him.
Why have you noticed me?
When she turned back
toward the field,
Boaz spoke quietly
to the men behind her.
Pull some out.
Leave it.
So hands reached
into gathered bundles,
loosened what was theirs
and let it fall.
Ruth bent.
Gathered.
Bent again.
Barley
where barley
should not have been.
⸻
In daylight
Boaz had prayed:
May you be fully rewarded
by the God of Israel,
under whose wings
you have come for refuge.
Later, at midnight,
he woke with a start.
A woman
at his feet.
Who are you?
I am Ruth.
Then—
Spread your wing
over your servant.
Darkness.
A threshing floor.
No elders.
No reapers.
No town.
Blessed are you.
My daughter.
Do not fear.
Before dawn
he poured barley
into her garment
and sent her home.
⸻
At the gate
another man counted
what redemption might cost him.
Then removed his sandal.
Boaz stood
where everyone could hear
and spoke the names
of men who could not.
Elimelech.
Chilion.
Mahlon.
And Ruth.
Ten elders watched.
The sandal changed hands.
The story remembers
who received it.
The other man
it calls
So-and-so.
⸻
Then Ruth cried out
in labor.
A child breathed.
The graves in Moab
stayed graves.
No footsteps
came back up the road.
No son appeared
in Naomi’s doorway.
Instead,
an old woman
who had come home empty
opened her arms
and someone
placed a child in them.
She drew him
against her breast.
The women gathered around her.
A son has been born
to Naomi.
Ruth had borne him.
Naomi held him.
They named him
Obed.
And for a while,
that was
far enough.
⸻
But the story
began naming names.
Perez.
Hezron.
Ram.
Amminadab.
Nahshon.
Salmon.
Boaz.
Obed.
Jesse.
David.
None of them
could see that far.
Not Naomi,
with Obed against her breast.
Not Ruth.
Not Boaz,
looking into the face of his son.
Beyond that child—
names they did not know.
Faces
they would never see.
Until one day,
in Bethlehem,
a boy knelt
before a prophet
and oil
ran down his head.
David.
A king.
⸻
Somewhere back in Moab,
beneath foreign earth,
a man’s bones
still bore a name
the way bones
bear anything—
silently,
in the dark,
where no one
was listening.
My God is King.
⸻
Centuries passed.
Kings came
and went.
Names became
generations.
Until someone
began naming them again.
Abraham.
Isaac.
Jacob.
Judah.
Perez.
Generations passing
one life into another
until—
Salmon fathered Boaz.
Boaz fathered Obed
by Ruth.
There she was.
Still there.
The foreign widow
who once bent
behind the reapers
and asked,
Why have you noticed me?
Her name had traveled
farther than she had.
Past the field.
Past the gate.
Past David.
All the way
to Jesus Christ.
⸻
The man named
My God is King
left Bethlehem hungry
and died in a foreign land.
He never saw the barley.
Never held Obed.
Never saw the oil
run down David’s head
or heard another genealogy
speak Ruth’s name.
But the name
he carried into Moab
was still speaking
long after
he could not.
My God is King.
—
Ruth 1–4; Matthew 1:1–6
—
© Gilda Wray. All rights reserved.
Thank you, Gilda. God bless you. 🙏🙂