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# Why Ruth stays
- URL: https://www.rubyskitchentable.com/why-ruth-stays/
- Published: 2026-10-11T10:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-11T10:00:00.000Z
- Author: Ruby Hayes
- Tags: devotional

*"Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."\* — Matthew 18:3*

The lesson this morning was Ruth and Naomi and I told the story the way I have told it for thirty years, which is to say I told it simply and did not skip the hard parts.

There is a woman whose husband dies. She has two daughters-in-law and they are far from home. She tells them to go back to their families because she has nothing left to give them. One of them goes. One of them stays.

I said to the children, "Why does Ruth stay?"

A boy named Thomas, who is in the third grade and has been in this class since September and already has opinions, said, "Because she loves her."

That is exactly right and I told him so.

There were seven children in the circle this morning and they were quiet the way they are quiet when the story has a woman in it who is alone, because children know what alone looks like even if they have never been alone, the way they know what dark looks like even when they are standing in the light.

Caleb was in his chair. He had his hands in his lap and he was watching Thomas the way he watches everyone — the whole head, one direction at a time. I do not know what Caleb is learning in this room. I know he is here, and I know he keeps coming back, and I know that is enough for now.

I handed out the coloring sheets and the crayons and the room got loud the way it does when the story is over and the children go back to being children, and I sat in my chair at the edge of the circle and watched them color and thought about Ruth on the road saying \*where you go I will go\*, and I thought about the seven children in the room who had nowhere to go and came here anyway, and that is the whole job.

Jesus says unless you become like children. I think he means this: a child does not know why she stays. She only knows she is not leaving.

*Lord, they came to the room again. That is the report.*