“For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God” (Ruth 1:16). Week 9 of home service, winding down our travels in the U.S. *** I recently met a young lady who shared a touching story with me. She and her husband got married a number of years ago and she enjoys a fulfilling job, interacting with many people—even though she does have to spend much of her time in front of a computer. Her husband’s vocation, on the other hand, keeps him tethered to a screen. “Sitting in front of computers all day long…” she told me, shaking her head, “we weren’t made to live like this…” And so, she has decided to “retire” from her job. She and her husband will soon move to another state to join his parents and siblings and work his family’s large farm. Having grown up in a rural environment, she knows what awaits her, she admitted: getting up at 3:30 AM every morning to tend to the animals, making breakfast for perhaps a dozen people—go, go, go, sixteen to eighteen hours a day. And yet: she can’t wait to work with her hands, to see the fruit of her labor as the seasons change, to raise animals, and to work hand-in-hand and shoulder-to-shoulder with her in-laws. She even feels like she’s getting married all over again, she remarked. Truly, in matrimony not only are you committing yourself to that individual. In many cases, you’re also “marrying” your spouse’s entire family—well, at a minimum, his or her parents. God bless this young lady who, similar to Ruth in the eponymous book in the Old Testament, is willing to embrace her husband’s entire family, to lodge where his people lodge, and to make his people her people. [The young lady granted me permission to write about her].
The Tiews in Germany 