a very dark story

Today in the One Year Bible, we read a very dark story from Judges 19:1-20:48. An unnamed man takes a concubine from Bethlehem and, after a long story, ends up in a rough neighborhood with her. Some men, like in Sodom, come to the house where they're staying and demand that the man be brought out so they can rape him. But the owner of the house says no, we'll give you his concubine instead. So they throw the poor woman out of the house and the men take turns raping her until she dies. Then her husband cuts her body up into pieces and sends the pieces to the twelve tribes of Israel so they'll get mad and come fight on his side against the bad guys.

There's no real hero in this story. It's a dark and gritty story of horrible things happening to selfish people. There's no one to root for. But it does show the need for God to send a judge to His people so that some order and truth can be found by His people.

It's a dark time in the world today, too. We were at the brink of a world war. And then we got a pandemic which is putting millions out of work and killing thousands. Now we have murder hornets to deal with. It's definitely enough to grab our attention, and hopefully cause us to seek God and His order and truth, and love and goodness, so that we can share those things with the people in our lives.

God, thanks for being where we can go when we need goodness in our lives again.