The Woman Who Walked Into the Storm

In 1943, a young Dutch woman named Corrie ten Boom watched her elderly father, Caspar, open their front door in Haarlem to a terrified Jewish neighbor. The woman clutched her coat and asked if she could hide. Caspar didn't hesitate. But what strikes me is what happened next — Corrie could have left. She was unmarried, capable, and the underground networks could have moved her to safety in Switzerland within a week. No one would have blamed her. The rational choice was to walk away from her aging father's dangerous compassion.

Instead, she stayed. She built the hiding place behind her bedroom wall. She learned the codes, memorized the routes, and tied her life to people marked for destruction. She chose their danger as her danger, their God-given dignity as her cause.

Ruth's words to Naomi carry that same weight. She wasn't reciting a poem — she was making an irreversible decision. A Moabite widow choosing to walk into poverty, foreignness, and an uncertain future beside a bitter old woman who had nothing to offer her. "Your people shall be my people, and your God my God." That is not sentiment. That is covenant spoken from the gut.

The deepest commitments in scripture are never made when the path ahead is clear. They are spoken precisely when the road turns dark and every practical reason says turn back.