On Monday of next week, my wife, Maria, and I rejoice our thirtieth wedding anniversary. As I take into consideration those two kids standing on the altar, I’d need to say “I do” all another time to all the pieces. One of the only a few exceptions can be one decision that needed to do with the marriage, not with the wedding. After 30 years, I’ve modified my mind concerning the biblical text I wouldn’t allow us to read.
Somebody suggested that we read on the ceremony a passage from the Old Testament book of Ruth, one which we heard read or sung at almost every wedding on the time. In the King James Version (which was what people almost all the time used), the text reads, “Whither thou goest, I’ll go; and where thou lodgest, I’ll lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God” (1:16). It’s concerning the young widow Ruth from Moab, pledging to her dead husband’s mother, Naomi, that she would go along with her to Naomi’s homeland of Israel.
I believed then, and still do, that each one Scripture is inspired and “profitable” (2 Tim. 3:16, ESV throughout), but I didn’t think that specific Scripture was appropriate for a marriage.
“It’s not about marriage,” I said. “It’s about someone taking a visit along with her mother-in-law.” I wanted something concerning the mystery of Christ in Ephesians 5 or about love from Song of Songs or about Jesus at the marriage at Cana. I could even have lived, I said, with 1 Corinthians 13. Of all the things concerning the wedding ceremony, I only insisted on two—that we use the normal vows and that we read another text than that one. You could say that I used to be ruthless in my Ruthlessness.
If I can provide some unwanted advice to my 22-year-old self, the groom, I’d say to him, “You are right concerning the bride, and right to ask her to marry you. This might be one of the best earthly decision you’ll make in the middle of your life, but you might be improper about Ruth. That text has all the pieces to do together with your next 30 years.”
Thirty years ago, I knew methods to preach concerning the cosmic mystery of Christ and his church, a mystery reflected in marriage. I knew that I loved this woman, and I didn’t need to be with anybody else. And I knew enough to know that the old vows were higher, that we would have liked the words our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents had vowed. How could we describe our commitment higher than “for higher or for worse … till death us do part”?
I do know some individuals who have had hard marriages. Some marriages I love greatly have been, I do know, a fierce struggle to maintain together. Ours just isn’t one in all those. We’ve faced way more “higher” than “worse,” and even when the more severe has arrived, it was all the time higher due to her. That’s mostly because I’m the quirky one and she or he’s the stable, unshakable one.
In the biblical account, Naomi, grieving the death of her sons, insists that each of her daughters-in-law stay behind in Moab, where they will start their lives another time. Ruth, though, was committing, before God, to walk right into a future completely unknown to her. And so were we.
If you had asked those two kids back on the altar in Biloxi, Mississippi—one in all us 22 years old, the opposite 20—what our life story can be, we couldn’t have predicted how much we’d laugh together. I’m unsure we could have predicted how—30 years later—we’d still need to be around one another on a regular basis.
We wouldn’t have known what it might be wish to hold one another after getting the phone call a few father’s death, or what it might be wish to feel the opposite trembling in tears after a miscarriage. We wouldn’t have known what it might be wish to trek out together to a Russian orphanage to adopt two little boys, nor what it might be wish to see in a hospital room our other three boys who got here to us the more typical way.
I wouldn’t have known that the one ultimatum I’d ever hear from my wife was about whether we’d ever attend one other Southern Baptist business meeting. I couldn’t have foreseen how much the words Donald Trump would shape the circumstances of our lives, or that that yr would outlast the seven years of tribulation our Sunday School prophecy charts had promised.
What I actually wouldn’t have predicted, though, is how—identical to the story of Ruth—a lot of our story can be made up not in those “big” moments but within the very small, strange ones: the fleeting encounter within the gleaning field, the midnight meeting within the threshing place, the birth of a baby.
Naomi said in the beginning that she should rename herself “bitter” (1:20), however the text shows us the turnaround of her now rejoicing with Ruth’s newborn on her lap. The women of the neighborhood said of this old widow, who once thought her story was over, “A son has been born to Naomi” (4:17). Many things that appeared to be coincidences—just the suitable thing happening at the suitable time—led as much as that.
Last night, Maria and I walked with our youngest son all the way down to the creek by our house, where our son climbed some trees as we walked the dog. The cicadas were buzzing and the fireflies were flashing throughout. I ended and desired to freeze that moment in time. It was almost as if a future version of myself was time traveling back to whisper, This is one of the best. This is the type of thing you’ll remember in your deathbed. Those are the moments that shape a life, that surprise us with joy.
I didn’t want Ruth at the marriage because I believed I knew how words worked. I used to be, in spite of everything, a preacher and a former political speechwriter, and an aspiring theologian. I wanted our wedding to be focused on the large story of Christ and his gospel—and an out-of-context Bible verse about some women who’d lost their husbands just wouldn’t do. My problem was that I couldn’t see that that little narrative is concerning the big story of Christ and his gospel. The conversation led to the trip, and the trip led to like, and the love led to a birth for a family from Bethlehem. The story ends with the mention of that baby, Obed, but not as a mere “happily ever after” resolution of the storyline.
The book ends with the words, “Obed fathered Jesse, and Jesse fathered David” (4:22). The setting is solid for what would occur from Bethlehem within the books to follow, 1 and a couple of Samuel, of the shepherd-musician who can be promised that one in all his sons would sit on his throne: “He shall construct a house for my name, and I’ll establish the throne of his kingdom ceaselessly” (2 Sam. 7:13).
Naomi didn’t know that her promise to at least one old woman would find yourself resulting in Israel’s king—nor that Israel’s king would result in the deliverance of that family line from existential threat, during to a different story, that of a employee and a virgin, a story that may find yourself, again, with a baby in Bethlehem, one in whom the complete cosmos holds together, one whose kingdom won’t ever end.
Your little story, and mine, aren’t quite so messianic of their stakes. But, nonetheless, possibly they’re, in a roundabout way. The Bible says that all the pieces working around us finally ends up for good, after which defines what that good is—that we can be “conformed to the image of his Son, so that he is perhaps the firstborn amongst many brothers” (Rom. 8:29). All of that comes about in each of our lives through numerous little decisions that ripple out in ways we will’t see. Every every now and then, though, we will look back and see some words—like I do—that were the suitable words to the suitable person—words that we will only explain by grace.
Jesus is Lord. All of the story of Scripture—all the story of the universe, visible and invisible—is his story. He holds the keys of life and death. And sometimes he stops by a marriage (John 2:1–2). Sometimes, in a marriage or, higher yet, in a wedding, one can get a glimpse of his glory (2:11).
Thirty years ago, we said to one another that we’d love, comfort, honor, and keep one another, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, so long as we each shall live. I’d say those words again. But I’d add another words too—“Where you die I’ll die, and there’ll I be buried. May the Lord accomplish that to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you” (Ruth 1:17).
At either my funeral or Maria’s, people can read any variety of Bible passages; I like all of them. But, if you happen to’re there, know there’s one in all them that I’m completely satisfied so that you can read or to sing or simply to recollect, because I’ll mean it then as I do now: “Whither thou goest, I’ll go.”
Russell Moore is the editor in chief at Christianity Today and leads its Public Theology Project.
