Then the women said to Naomi, “Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you … . He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age.” (Ruth 4:14-15a)

The One who is Always

Seek beauty. Hold it fast. Love sings its holy name in every exquisite moment that we may know the Love who always is, wanting only for us to know there is an always, as our times so quickly pass.

That Always shines in Naomi’s old eyes, as she gazes into the face of an infant, cradling the future of her family and our lives in her arms.

The child is Obed. No reason for you to know him, except that he became the father of Jesse, the father of King David, a man whose passions for life, love and God made him more beloved than any leader in Israel’s long history, despite his wayward appetites. They remembered even 1000 years later when Jesus’ rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, hailing him as the Son of David.

Naomi could not have dreamed any of this as she held the child of Ruth, her daughter-in-law. She only knew that her hard history—losing a husband and two sons amid famine and flight—had finally found some redemption, a reason to hope as she looked into the child’s eyes trying to imagine what dreams might still find fulfillment.

Perhaps … the One who is Always was not done with her …. or with anyone.

Imagining her, watching her hold the child, it is impossible to know what is more beautiful, the light in her eyes, the curve of the infant’s cheek or the flame of hope fired in her old heart.

Who knows what is yet to come, what beauty and wonder remains to be born, not Naomi nor any of us? The other day Dixie showed me a snapshot of me holding grandson Ben. He in a blue onesie, maybe two months old, his dark Latin eyes fixed on my blues, the capture of a single moment never to be repeated exactly the same way again, printed on paper, engraved ever-more deeply in my heart. And hope? What heart can hold it all?

Next month that black-haired infant in a onesie graduates high school, his eyes as alive as ever, and mine, like Naomi’s, filled with love and hope that only beauty can birth, beauty born of the Love who is Always, always with us, always beyond us, breaking open our hearts to love and hope beyond our wildest expectations.  

David L. Miller