Response To Ruth: Leveraging Singleness

“Single life may be only a stage of a life’s journey, but even a stage is a gift. God may replace it with another gift, but the receiver accepts His gifts with thanksgiving. This gift for this day. The life of faith is lived one day at a time, and it has to be lived—not always looked forward to as though the “real” living were around the next corner. It is today for which we are responsible. God still owns tomorrow.”

–Elisabeth Elliot, Let Me Be a Woman

I think that Ruth probably experienced the same sentiment that Elliot is portraying in the quote above. I think it would be safe to assume that she didn’t ask for her husband to die, that moving to an unfamiliar place would not have been her ideal life. But what we see through Elliot’s quote and through Ruth’s life is that trusting God, our faith in God, is an active process of working to live out that faith in the seasons we have been called to.

Ruth displays what it looks like to exchange the notion that singleness is something to be cured. She trusted that the Lord was going to provide for her in the means he saw fit, but she didn’t sit idly and wait to be graced with provision. This is seen in Ruth 2:2-3 which says, “And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, “Let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain after him in whose sight I shall find favor.” And she said to her, “Go, my daughter.” So she set out and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers, and she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the clan of Elimelech.” Ruth displays that she understood that her faith in God was calling her to move outwardly, that she needed to work. She was not single and passively waiting for the Lord to provide her a husband, she was single and diligent to work in her waiting, trusting that the Lord would be enough even if he did not provide her a husband.

The contentment we say we will attain in that next season of life—whatever “next” may be—will not magically come. It will not come because a season of life or set of circumstances cannot be the basis on which we are searching for our joy and our satisfaction. Living with true contentedness, or allowing Christ to increase while we decrease (John 3:30), comes with the understanding that Jesus is the giver of gifts and we are allowed the opportunity to serve him within the capacity that he sees fit.

Maybe you’ve found yourself in a season you didn’t ask for. Live by the example that Ruth set, working humbly to express her faith, exercising a belief that Jesus is enough regardless of what comes next.

Written by Church Member, Taylor Bumgarner