Ruth - A breath of fresh air

The readings - Day 85 - Ruth (all four chapters)

Well we're finally out of the book of Judges. Sweet.

The relationship between Judges and Ruth is interesting to me. In Judges, we got a very macro-level view of the goings-on in Israel, and for the most part, they were appalling. Covenants broken, punishments doled out left, right and centre, and generally terrible people doing terrible things. There were glimmers of hope, etc, to be sure, but few and far between. I don't think anyone would try to argue that Judges is an optimistic book.

That's why reading Ruth immediately afterwards is such a refreshing experience. After the bloodshed, idolatry, treachery and violence of the nation as a whole, we get zoomed in to an intimate series of snapshots in the life of a single family. Make no mistake, there's still tragedy here, and not all is rosy, but the story as a whole just can't help but be uplifting.

Num. 23-25 - So about Balaam...

The readings - Day 52 - Numbers 23-25

In the early days of this particular scriptural adventure, one of the things that kept leaping out at me was the difficulties I saw in attempting to fit the Bible into a box that seems to be particularly favoured by the more fundamentalist gatherings of Christians.

I know I'm not making them up, because I grew up with some of them. I knew people growing up who steadfastly refused to believe that dinosaurs existed because they weren't specifically mentioned in the Bible.