Filtered Thoughts

'The Cinderella story of the bible.' That's how I once heard someone describe the book of Ruth. And my dramatic eye roll could have made the earth move. For much of my life I avoided this biblical love story. I suppose bad past experiences can make one a little jaded about such things. But, of course, as I ventured to read through, I learned that this story is about much more than a romance. And what's most relatable is that our characters today have also had bad experiences, leaving one to become a little jaded as well. Ruth is the only old testament book named after a non-Jew, a gentile, and the only book in the bible that is named for an ancestor of the Messiah. It is one of only two books named after a woman. Scripture doesn’t tell us who the author is, but according to the Jewish Talmud, it was written by Samuel. Let's take today's story in more bite-size portions. Now it came to pass, in the days when the judges ruled, that there was a f...

I have personally been most fascinated by the concept of an infinite God who is outside of time. To think that a day to Him is as a thousand years is curiously strange. To read verses like Joel 2:25, where He says,  "I will restore the years that the locust have eaten" , it amazes me that such a thing is possible. How can years be restored? How can time itself be contrived and altered after being spent? Well, how can the dead be raised? How can a man walk on water? How can illness be healed with a touch or demons cast out with a single word? In my many conversations with young people who are tottering back and forth with the faith, they say they want to believe, that there are  some  things about Jesus they do believe. However, these kinds of bizarre stories of defying physics, natural law, death, and others... sometimes seem, well, unbelievable to them. I've learned that asking the skeptic questions is of more utility than telling. I'll usually ask, "Tell me...