“How can I make it on my own?” wailed a victim who feared to leave an extremely dangerous situation. How often this fear robs people of the courage to move out into a new life! One of our favorite Bible stories speaks to just this question. It is that of the widow Ruth who left her own surroundings to make a new life in Bethlehem with her destitute mother-in-law: “Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people and your God my God” (Ruth 1:16). Her promise sounded so beautiful when she said it, but as Ruth watched the back of her sister-in-law returning to her own Moabite people, the reality began to look grimmer. She could not, like Orphah, simply allow her widowed mother-in-law to totter along to a distant home where there were no longer close relatives to care for her. Somehow she would have to find a way to support Naomi and her-self in an alien land, with a strange language, customs, patterns of worship, and ways of earning a living.

Ruth had anticipated the relief that her mother-in-law would feel at being again in familiar surroundings. Instead she fell apart in utter demoralization: “Do not call me Naomi [pleasant] but Mara [bitter]” (Ruth 1:20–21). Naomi’s old friends barely recognized her, and they could think of little to offer to the young foreigner who accompanied her. Ruth’s one hope lay in the new God she had learned to trust.

As the morning dawned, she had to find a way to help herself. She knew of the Israelite custom of al-lowing the poor to follow after the harvesters to pick up what had been dropped of the grain. This daughter of a well-to-do Moabite family had no choice but to accept her role as a pauper gleaning the leavings of the rich. Her foreign style of clothing identified her as an impoverished immigrant, and her struggles to use the Hebrew language soon made her a butt of merriment. And then there were some who tried to be too familiar. She clenched her teeth and worked on so that none would see her chin quiver. The miserable monotony of the hot day was suddenly broken by the arrival of the landowner of the field, Boaz, an older man with a kind face. He was soon to single her out, for he recognized in her the young woman who had shown such courageous devotion in the care of Naomi. Surely this was a sign of her new faith in Israel’s God. Noting how hard she worked, he insisted she be treated with decency and that all harassment must stop at once. She was welcome to drink from the water supplied for the field hands and to have lunch from their rations, and she was not to be disbarred from her full share of the grain that fell upon the ground during reaping operation. An extra handful or two would do no harm.

At the end of the day, Ruth’s hard toil had proved productive and there was barley to bring home for Naomi. The old woman’s spirits soared as she perceived the provision for their immediate needs and the prospect of subsequent protection from her dead husband’s kinsman. Never again was Ruth to find survival so desperate.

Although the next morning Ruth still ached from her hard work, she had to take advantage of every day of the harvest season—and Boaz had encouraged her to remain in his fields as the harvest of one crop succeeded another. The work was hard and hot, but daily the store of grain grew. That was all very well for now, but how were they to survive the winter?

As Naomi’s depression lifted, she came to suspect that her husband’s kinsman might have formed an attachment for Ruth he dared not express. There was in ancient Israel legislation not only to feed the poor but also to provide young widows with a spouse from among the dead husband’s kinfolk. True, he was not the kinsman with first legal claim to Ruth’s hand, but surely he was the kindest, the one truly concerned for her welfare. In the full harvest moon, Ruth followed the instructions of her mother-in-law and on the threshing floor dared to reveal her inclination. Incredulously, Boaz perceived her willingness to choose him: “May you be blessed by the Lord, my daughter; this last instance of your loyalty is better than the first; you have not gone after young men, whether poor or rich” (Ruth 3:10).

And so the widowed immigrant found love and care for both herself and Naomi. In time, she would be-come the ancestress of King David and ultimately of the Messiah. More than that, her story has served as a model for those who must learn to support themselves in the hardest of circumstances.