Friday, June 5, 2009

The Book of Ruth

Wow!! As I ran this morning i reflected on our book club night that the women of Hope (our church community) had last night. There were so many things that came out of this evening. First of all let me introduce the characters!!

Left to right - Deanna, Rachel, Shannon (in the back)Janet, (young girls of Corina) Rebecca, and Alyson, Kelli (in back), Me, Krista, Catherine, Corina ,


God just puts things together. When I arrived last fall, Janet told me they used to have book club nights but that she just couldn't get them organized and wondered if I would do that. I was new and love to read and so we did our first one on the Shack, the second one on Sacred Rhythms and our third last night on the book of Ruth. Kelli offered to facilitate and I offered my home. Shannon offered her wonderful homemade bread and I tried some new butter spreads and chili pepper jelly. As we all settled into our seats there were many comments about how wonderful the bread was.

Our facilitor, Kelli has a masters in divinity and has been teaching Bible classes at Hardin Simmons. She has just been accepted into the U of Oxford and we have all been praying for months about that next step for her. So we were in wonderful hands as we dove into this book.

What a wonderful book written from a woman's perspective. Oh, the conversation brought out all of our experiences and how they have effected us. We talked about suffering and compared Naomi to Job. We talked about the lovingkindness of so many characters in this story and the big turn Naomi did between ch. 1 and ch.2. We visited the topic of how we saw the gospel in this story. It really is all about Jesus.

Ruth 4:14,15 "Blessed is the LORD who has not left you without a redeemer today, and may his name become famous in Israel. May he also be to you a restorer of life and a sustainer of your old age; for your daughter-in-law, who loves you and is better to you than seven sons, has given birth to him."

When we drew to the end, Shannon ask, "Can we meet in about 2 weeks and do the same thing with the book of Esther?" So that is the plan. One of the thoughts I felt from the Holy Spirit this morning was that last night spurred on increased energy put toward our desire for God's Word and enjoyment of women fellowship offered at Hope!!

2 comments:

Janet Jergins said...

I really loved the discussion last night and being with each of the women there. Thanks for recording the event with a picture and blog. Looking forward to many more book clubs to come.

mad4books said...

Oh, I wanted to be there so badly! I loved our other two book gatherings, but I just couldn't pass up a trip to Austin to see my baby...

Let me know when the Esther meeting is so it will be in the church bulletin.