The Rev Richard Baxter explains why decisions made on a journey also impact on others.

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I once travelled with a group of three adults and seven teenagers to visit a partner congregation in Malawi. I was the only member in our group to have previous experience of sub-Saharan Africa, so I was leading the trip.

Changing flights in Nairobi, we discovered our connecting flight to Lilongwe no longer existed, and there were no others until the next day. Nairobi Airport is a busy and noisy place, with flights from all over Africa and the Middle East. We had to make an unscheduled stop over, but we had no visas to leave the airport and enter Kenya because we were only supposed to change flights there. It took several hours of negotiation to resolve the situation, and to be transferred to a hotel for an overnight stay. The awareness of being responsible for other people’s children when we were all briefly stuck in a developing country without the right papers suddenly overwhelmed me, and only really eased when we got back home several weeks later.

Naomi experienced a similar burden of responsibilty in respect of her family. Her story is in Ruth chapter 1. Naomi and her family were economic migrants living in Moab to escape famine in their own land. Tragedy strikes the family, and Naomi loses a husband and two adult sons in a short period. Naturally her focus is her own sorrow, and broken-hearted she decides it is time to return to her own country.

However, quickly she realises that her decisions affect others too, and a sense of responsibilty lands on her shoulders. Her daughters in law, Orpah and Ruth, set out on the journey with her, but what for Naomi is a journey home is for them a journey into exile. They are leaving everything they know to journey with her.

Naomi tries to send the young women to their own home areas. Orpah is eventually persuaded but Ruth refuses to leave Naomi. In one of the Old Testament’s most moving and affectionate passages Ruth says: “Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.” Essentially, Ruth doesn’t care where she’s going. Who she is going with is her most pressing concern. The decisions we each make on our journey will not just affect us – inevitably they will touch the lives of others too. Sometimes that can feel like an unbearable burden. But Ruth knew that getting all the decisions right was less important than travelling with the right companions. She was going where Naomi was going.

Faced with hard decisions which will not only affect ourselves but others as well, we cannot always have complete certainty we are doing the right thing or making the right choices. But we can know who we want to have travelling the road alongside us. Ruth knew that the place she belonged was wherever Naomi was going, and Naomi knew her decisions would change Ruth’s life too.

Jesus says to us: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Journeying with him is more important than knowing exactly where we are going.

The Rev Richard Baxter is minister at Fort William: Duncansburgh MacIntosh linked with Kilmonivaig