Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: JOURNEY (01/13/22)
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TITLE: Choices - a Monologue | Previous Challenge Entry
By Laurie Kiel
01/19/22 -
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Choices. So many choices. When to stay. When to go. Where to go. Do I follow where I believe God is leading or head back to safety? It’s hard to make the right choice, especially with Fear and Doubt whispering in my ears.
As I debate my latest decision, I think about a woman known for making the wrong choice. When Ruth chose to keep going with Naomi, despite being urged to go home to Moab, her sister-in-law Orpah made a different choice, took a different journey. I wonder what Orpah would have to say to us if she could visit us now. I wonder what it would have been like to be Orpah.
WOMAN PUTS ON BIBLICAL HEADDRESS
Hello, you all know me. I’m famous. My name is spread all over the world, my namesake even had a landmark tv show, she still has a media empire. She doesn’t even need to use her last name; she is that famous. Everyone knows my name—her name, I mean.
I’m sure you’ve all heard of ORPAH WINDFREY! All right, all right, that’s not how you know her. Orpah’s relatives wouldn’t pronounce her name correctly, so she became Oprah. I hear that it still says my name on her birth certificate. Not that hardly anyone cares or knows my name.
I am Orpah, daughter-in-law to Naomi, sister-in-law to Ruth. Ah Ruth, you don’t see a book of the Bible named Orpah. My name only appears in the book of Ruth, and then--nothing.
I remember the last time I saw Ruth and Naomi. We were journeying back to Naomi’s home, the city of Bethlehem in the land of Judah. Ruth was so full of excitement and anticipation at going to the land where our late husbands were born. After all, Judah was the home of Naomi, and the home of Jehovah who was Naomi’s god and perhaps, Ruth’s god as well.
Ruth would prattle on to me for hours about the wonders of this foreign god. She tried to teach me this strange word she learned from Naomi. Hesed. Mercy. What a foreign idea, what weakness. That was not the kind of god I was raised to believe in, that was not the kind of god Ruth was raised to believe in. WE worshipped and served Chemosh. Now there was a god. No wimpy, merciful god. A god of fire and vengeance and hunger.
There were three of us on this journey to Bethlehem: Naomi, Ruth and me. But there were really a fourth and a fifth, Fear and Doubt.
My doubts and fears were so real I could almost see them standing there. I could certainly hear Fear hissing in one ear while Doubt whispered in the other.
What was I DOING? The Jews hated Moabites. Ruth and I would be strangers in a strange land. Our protectors, Naomi’s husband, Ruth’s and my husbands, were all long dead. How could someone as old and feeble as Naomi protect us from her countrymen. Why did I agree to go on this journey in the first place?
Why? It was fear again. I was afraid of being left behind. How ironic. Fear pushed me to leave Moab, Fear was tugging at me to go back home. Home. Moab was my home – not Bethlehem. Only a dreamer like Ruth could believe Bethlehem could ever become our home. Moab was my home. If I went back there, I would surely find another husband. My prospects were certain brighter in Moab than in Bethlehem. But I did love Naomi. She was like a mother to me. How could I abandon her? How could I break my word? But then, how could I not?
And then I heard Naomi urging Ruth and me to go back home. Oh, we demurred at first, refusing to go. But she persisted!
And relief bubbled through my body.
I was free! Naomi had released me from my foolish decision. I kissed and hugged her and Ruth, and I was on my way back home. So why did it feel like I was headed in the wrong direction?
I journeyed back home and into obscurity except for a mispronounced namesake. I’ll never know what would have happened if I had stayed with Ruth and Naomi. I will never know what would have happened had I made the right choice.
WOMAN REMOVES THE HEADRESS AND ADDRESSES THE AUDIENCE
Choices. So many choices. And it is so easy to listen to the voices of Fear and Doubt and go in the wrong direction. But today I resolve to listen to God, not fear, and head to the land of His promise. How about you?
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