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.

Wray of Light

My God Is King