People Who Don’t Belong

by: Michael Wilcock

Some time ago a man arrived by air in Paris without the papers he needed either to enter France or to go anywhere else. For years he remained in limbo, living in Charles de Gaulle Airport on charity, an object of curiosity, while the lawyers argued. He was stateless. He didn’t belong anywhere.

Many people think that is a bizarre situation and yet don’t themselves have much of a sense of “belonging.” We live in societies where people have little experience of community. Boaz’s conversation with his foreman about Ruth opens up something wonderful for such people. He doesn’t ask who this newcomer is. He asks whose she is. He is concerned to know not just her personal identity, but what family or household she belongs to. He discovers, of course, that her links with her Moabite family have been severed by distance and those with her Israelite family have been severed by death. She does not really belong anywhere.

But she for her part will discover that God has a special care for such people. Psalm 68:5-6 calls the Lord “a father for the fatherless and protector of widows,” a God who “settles the solitary in a home.”