invitation to belonging
How has experiencing a sense of belonging in surprising and or unexpected places impacted you?
Ruth 2:5
To whom does this woman belong?
Growing up, I enjoyed wandering to talk with other people. There was a time in a department store when a staff person said on the loudspeaker “there is a young girl in shoes and we need to know who she belongs to.”
I am hard pressed to imagine a scenario like this today, but I remember talking with my mom on the way home about how I could talk to people, but that I was to go nowhere with someone else because I belonged to her and my dad. I remember being curious about belonging and hoping that everyone had someone to belong to, or a family to belong in.
In this story of Boaz meeting and protecting Ruth, the initial question “who does this young woman belong to?” shocked me at first. My gut reaction was a bit indignant as I thought, “She is a child of God!”
But when read against the whole story, this question is one of care- it is a question that leads to Ruth experiencing unexpected belonging in the face of a world that would have harmed her otherwise. In many ways, when we take a broader look at this story, I wonder what questions we might hear through a lens of defensiveness and assumed rejection that are actually unexpected invitations to take refuge and to belong.
How has experiencing a sense of belonging in surprising and or unexpected places impacted you?
—Pepa Paniagua