Ruth 2: 1-23

In 1994, there was a massive genocide in the country of Rwanda. Between 800,000 and 1 million people were killed in about 100 days. Most of those who died were Tutsi’s. Most of those doing the killing were Hutu’s. Like all wars, it was brutal and bloody, but this one was also very personal. People identified their Tutsi neighbors to those who were looking to kill them. I know, that doesn’t sound peaceful. It wasn’t. There is a widow in Rwanda named Iphegenia. Her friend and business partner is a woman named Epiphania. During the genocide, Iphegeneia’s husband and five of her children were hacked to death by a group of Hutu men. Among those men was a man named Jean-Bosco, who was Epiphania’s husband. Today Jean-Bosco’s wife, Epiphania, sits beside Iphigenia and they weave together. The baskets they weave are called peace baskets.

About 2 weeks ago, a young woman named Dulce Gonzalez was sure that her wedding was ruined. She and her fiancé had planned a wedding on the beach in Pascagoula, Mississippi. Rows of white folding chairs had been set up on the sand. There was a flower-covered altar inscribed with her initials and those of her fiancé and a white carpet of rose petals down which she was supposed to walk to the altar. Everything was perfect. It was a beautiful setting, a gorgeous stretch of beach on the Gulf of Mexico. But as the time for the ceremony approached, thunder boomed and lightning flashed across the sky. Wind and rain drenched her fairy-tale setup and whipped up powerful ocean waves. All of the planning, all of the beautiful setup was for nothing. There wasn’t going to be a wedding on the beach that day, and there was no Plan B. Gonzalez sat and watched from inside her parents’ car, in tears. She thought she was having a panic attack. It was a disaster. But as it happened – there are those words – as it happened, a couple had been watching the proceedings from their beachfront home. Cynthia Strunk had observed several such weddings each year, and none had ever been canceled by rain. She didn’t want this to be the first. So in the driving rain, Strunk, 67, walked to the car that Gonzalez was in. She had no umbrella, no rain coat. She was absolutely soaking wet when she reached the car. And she said, “Have your wedding in my home.” The bride and her parents could not believe it. They were flabbergasted. Gonzalez recalled her sudden premonition, as Strunk approached the car, that the total stranger in the big house nearby was going to offer the use of her home. “I was like, ‘Mom, I told you! I told you!’” she remembered. “I had this feeling she was going to save us.”...

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