THE BLESSING OF WORK                                      1 Thessalonians 4:11-12  “Make it your goal to live a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands, just as we instructed you before.” (v11) An empty stable stays clean, but no income comes from an empty stable. Work brings profit, but mere talk leads to poverty! Proverbs 14:4, […]

ISRAEL’S DARK SETTING                 Judges 21:25; 1 Samuel 1:1–28 The setting is Israel before the glory days of King David. There has been a long period—a couple hundred years—of intermittent warfare, cycles of events during which Israel would suffer invasion followed by famine; then a judge would emerge and win a temporary peace. During the peace, the […]