The Grandmother Who Never Expected to Hold a Child Again

Margaret Ellison sat in a plastic chair at Riverside Community Hospital in Chattanooga, Tennessee, convinced she had outlived every good thing. Her husband, Carl, had died of pancreatic cancer three years earlier. Her only son, David, had been killed by a drunk driver eighteen months after that. She had packed away the crib in the attic, donated David's clothes, and stopped setting extra places at Thanksgiving.

Then came the phone call. David's widow, Annie — who could have disappeared into her own grief, who owed Margaret nothing — had kept calling every Sunday. Had kept showing up with casseroles and companionship. And now Annie stood in a hospital doorway, holding a newborn boy with David's same crooked nose, saying, "Mom, come meet your grandson."

Margaret's hands trembled as she took the baby. The women in her church small group, who had prayed her through two funerals and a hundred sleepless nights, crowded around her and wept. One of them whispered, "God did not forget you."

That is Ruth 4:14. The women of Bethlehem gathered around Naomi — a woman emptied by famine, exile, and death — and declared that the Lord had not left her without a redeemer. In a grandson's tiny face, Naomi saw proof that God had been working through Ruth's stubborn loyalty all along, turning a story of loss into a lineage of kings.