What, I wondered, could have happened to them? This kind of thing is not, of course, unique to either that moment or to me. We all have wondered at one time or another what ever happened to this or that. Sometimes we are surprised the pencil we are seeking is really right behind our ear.

Go to any reunion, perhaps your high school's twenty-fifth, or better yet, fiftieth, and you will hear "What ever happened to so and so?" "Whatever happened..." is always a regular reunion litany.

This week my mind was directed upon the path of "whatever happened" wondering as I was reading my daily Bible , I was intrigued by this partial verse from Ruth 1:14 (NLT). "...and Orpah kissed her mother-in-law goodbye." Here, in the story, we have the two daughters-in-law of Naomi going separate ways. They made different choices.

Ruth chose to go on with Naomi, into a strange land with different people and a different god, a single God. It was a land of different customs and perhaps food, a land full of strangers that seemingly offered little chance of finding a new husband.

Orpah, on the other hand, chose to do the smart thing. She was encouraged by Naomi to return to "her people and her gods." There among her many relatives she would find succor and hope. Hope for a new husband and a secure future.

Whatever happened to Orpah? We don't know. She was never heard of again.

What happened to Ruth, the one who chose the obviously more difficult path, the path advised against by her mother-in-law? Well, all she found was a wonderfully righteous and loving husband and the one true and living God. Her words, "Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God," (v.16b) have been repeated in countless wedding ceremonies through the centuries, and Ruth... Ruth became a direct link in the lineage of our Lord Jesus Christ. As so, one took the path of self-love and passed into obscurity and the other took the path of selfless love and after thousands of years, still, no one ever needs ask, "Whatever happened to Ruth?"

Perhaps there's a lesson here.

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