Still Walking
Day 13 — Headwind: Ruth 2:1-3, 8-12
Introduction
Yesterday we named the loss. We sat with Naomi’s accounting — I went out full and came back empty — and we didn’t rush past it. We let the bitterness be what it was. And we noticed, carefully, that God’s presence in the loss was not visible in her circumstances. It was visible in the person walking beside her.
Today we stay in the loss. The restoration is not here yet. Naomi is still empty. The graves in Moab are still there. Nothing has been undone.
But something has shifted — not in what has happened, but in what is happening. Ruth goes out to the fields. She works. She keeps moving. Not because she has answers. Not because the grief is resolved. Not because she knows how the story ends. She moves because the next step is in front of her and she takes it.
There is a theology in that — a quiet, unglamorous, deeply important theology. It is not the theology of the mountaintop or the breakthrough moment. It is the theology of the walking. Of the person who has lost something real and irreplaceable and gets up the next morning anyway and goes to the field.
That is where provision begins. Not in the resolution of the grief, but in the movement through it.
Scripture
Now Naomi had a relative on her husband’s side, a man of standing from the clan of Elimelek, whose name was Boaz. And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, “Let me go to the fields and pick up the leftover grain behind anyone in whose eyes I find favor.” Naomi said to her, “Go ahead, my daughter.” So she went out, entered a field and began to glean behind the harvesters. As it turned out, she was working in a field belonging to Boaz, who was from the clan of Elimelek.
So Boaz said to Ruth, “My daughter, listen to me. Don’t go and glean in another field and don’t go away from here. Stay here with my female servants. Watch the field where the men are harvesting, and follow along after the female servants. I have told the men not to lay a hand on you. And whenever you are thirsty, go and get a drink from the water jars the men have filled.” At this, she bowed down with her face to the ground. She exclaimed, “Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me — a foreigner?” Boaz replied, “I’ve been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband — how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to a people you did not know before. May the Lord repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the Lord, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.” — Ruth 2:1-3, 8-12 (NIV)
Reflection
What’s Happening in the Text
Ruth does not wait for a sign. She does not wait for the grief to lift or for clarity about the future or for Naomi to recover enough to lead. She asks permission to go to the fields — let me go — and she goes. The text adds a detail that reads like coincidence and isn’t: as it turned out, she ended up in the field of Boaz, a relative of Elimelek, a man of standing.
As it turned out. That phrase is doing quiet, enormous theological work. Ruth didn’t know whose field it was. She was gleaning — the ancient provision for the poor, following behind harvesters, picking up what they left. It is humble work, unglamorous work, survival work. And it is precisely in that ordinary forward motion that the first thread of restoration appears.
Boaz notices her. Asks about her. Is told what she has done — the loyalty, the leaving of her homeland, the staying with Naomi. And he speaks a blessing over her that names what she has been doing without knowing it: you have come to take refuge under the wings of the God of Israel.
Ruth didn’t know she was taking refuge. She thought she was gleaning. She thought she was just doing what she could. And it turns out those were the same thing.
What This Means for the Reader
Day 2 of loss is not the day the grief resolves. It is not the day the answers arrive. It may simply be the day you get up and go to the field — not because you feel like it, not because you understand what God is doing, but because the next step is there and you are still capable of taking it.
This is where the series has to be most careful not to create false hope. The restoration in Ruth’s story is real — but it takes time, it comes through ordinary means, and it is not available as a promise that your specific loss will end the same way. Naomi’s sons do not come back. Her husband does not come back. What comes back is a different kind of fullness than what she lost.
What the story does offer — honestly, without overclaiming — is this: the movement through grief is not a betrayal of it. Getting up the next morning is not the same as pretending the loss didn’t happen. Going to the field with empty hands and doing the next available thing is not a denial of the emptiness. It is the way the emptiness begins, slowly, to be met.
And here is the thing about the Ruth posture — the Jesus with flesh on posture from yesterday — that cuts both ways today: if you are in loss, the person who has stayed with you is waiting for you to let them into the field. To let them walk beside you while you work, while you grieve, while you do the ordinary, unglamorous next thing. You don’t have to be recovered to be accompanied. You only have to keep moving.
And if you are the Ruth in someone else’s story right now — the one who has stayed, who has chosen not to leave — know that the most important thing you are doing may look like nothing from the outside. Showing up. Staying close. Not fixing. Not explaining. Just being present in the field while they work through what they’ve lost. That is not a small thing. It is the form God’s provision takes when it has flesh on.
Grief does not have to be resolved to be walked through. You only have to take the next step.
Grace Note
He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. — Psalm 147:3 (NIV)
Binds up — not erases, not undoes, but tends to. The language is medical and deliberate: a wound that has been bound is still a wound. But it is being cared for. It is in the process of healing. He is already at work in what you are carrying, even when the work is invisible, and the wound is still tender to the touch. Tomorrow we rest. Today: one more step.
Prayer Prompt
Lord, I don’t have a resolution to bring You today. The loss is still what it was yesterday, and the day before that. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
But I’m here. I got up. I’m taking the next step, even if I can’t see where it leads or what it’s building toward. I’m choosing to believe — not always feeling it, but choosing it — that the movement through this is not a betrayal of what I lost. That going to the field with empty hands is not the same as saying it didn’t matter.
I want to ask You something specific today: show me the Boaz in my story. The person, the provision, the small evidence that You are already at work in the field I’m walking into — the thing I might walk past because it doesn’t look like what I was hoping for. I don’t want to miss what You’re doing because I’m only looking for the thing I lost.
And if there is someone in my life right now who is in the field of their own grief — let me be Ruth to them today. Present. Staying. Not fixing. Just there. That is enough. You’ve shown me it’s enough. Amen.
Response
1. Take the Next Step (Kinesthetic): Identify one concrete, ordinary thing you have been putting off because the loss has made it hard to move. Not a big thing — a field-sized thing. Something doable today. Do it. Not as a performance of recovery, but as the next step. Let the movement be the act of faith.
2. Be Ruth Today (Relational): Think of one person in your life who is in the middle of their own loss right now. Reach out today — not with answers, not with theology, not with a plan to fix it. Just contact them — a message, a call, showing up. Let your presence say what Ruth’s presence said: I’m not going anywhere.
3. Carry It Forward (Connective): Yesterday you named the empty place. Today, on the same piece of paper or in the same journal entry, write one sentence: The next step in front of me is ____. It doesn’t have to be significant. It doesn’t have to be related to the loss. It just has to be true and it just has to be next. That is enough for today.
To read all the posts in this devotional series, visit: https://www.thisistheway.live/t/headwind
© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way