When everything feels empty, a quiet act of loyalty becomes the doorway for God’s future. 1.0 Introduction — When Life Empties Out Ruth 1 opens not with miracle or victory but with hunger, migration, and funerals. “In the days when the judges ruled,” a famine strikes Bethlehem—the “house of bread” runs out of bread (Ruth 1:1). A family leaves the promised land to survive in Moab. What begins as a temporary move becomes a decade of loss. Elimelech dies. His sons marry Moabite women, then they...

In the days when the judges ruled, a quiet story in Bethlehem began to hum with the future music of God’s kingdom. 1.0 Why Ruth, and Why Now? The book of Ruth is small enough to read in a single sitting, yet wide enough to hold famine and fullness, grief and joy, death and new life, local drama and global hope. It takes place "in the days when the judges ruled" (Ruth 1:1)—an era of chaos, violence, and spiritual drift. In Judges, Israel stumbles again and again through patterns of idolatry...

When our own zeal has shattered people we love, how do we grieve, seek repair, and live with vows we never should have made? 1.0 Introduction — When Victory Feels Like Defeat Judges 21 opens in the silence after the shouting. The war is over. Gibeah has fallen. Benjamin has been crushed. The “outrage in Israel” has been avenged (20:6, 48). On paper, Israel has won. But as the dust settles, a new horror comes into focus: a tribe of the covenant people is hanging by a thread. Only six hundred...