“In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land.” That’s how the book of Ruth begins, and it’s not a throwaway detail. The book of Judges just finished describing one of the darkest chapters in Israel’s history: idolatry, civil war,…

There is a kind of spiritual danger that doesn’t announce itself with loud temptations or dramatic falls. It creeps in quietly — in the form of going through the motions, of saying the right words without meaning them, of showing up to worship while the…