The Weight of a One-Way Ticket

In 1956, a twenty-three-year-old Hungarian cellist named Katalin Varga walked across the Austrian border carrying nothing but her instrument case and a photograph of her mother. The Soviet tanks had rolled into Budapest, and she knew she would never return. She spoke no English, had no contacts in the West, and her concert career — the only life she had known — was gone overnight.

A church in Vienna took her in. A pastor's wife gave her wool socks and a bowl of lentil soup. Within a year, strangers in Chicago had pooled money to bring her across the Atlantic. She played in the Chicago Symphony for thirty-one years.

Katalin used to tell younger musicians, "I did not come to America because I was brave. I came because there was nowhere else to go. And God had already spread His wing over Chicago before I ever bought the ticket."

Ruth understood this. She left Moab not with a strategic plan but with empty hands and a stubborn loyalty to Naomi and Naomi's God. Boaz recognized what it cost her — everything familiar, every safety net, every god she had grown up with. So he spoke this blessing: "A full reward be given you by the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge."

The refuge was already prepared. Ruth just had to walk toward it.