When Captives are Set Free
When captives are set free, we rejoice—but the silence that followed October 7 reveals how deeply the church needs repentance, courage, and faith.
Two years ago, in the final hours of the biblical holiday Sukkot—the Festival of Tabernacles—the nation of Israel was brutally attacked. More than 1,200 people were murdered, and 251 civilians were taken hostage.
One week ago, in the first hours of Sukkot this year, I gathered with a few others to pray for the peace of Jerusalem—and especially for the fate of those still held captive.
Today, in the final hours of Sukkot, all of the living hostages were released.
That is a miracle.
Praise be to the God who has not forgotten—and will never forget—his people.
“The whole company that had returned from exile built temporary shelters and lived in them. From the days of Joshua son of Nun until that day, the Israelites had not celebrated it like this. And their joy was very great.”
— Nehemiah 8:17–18
The Wounds That Remain
Two years of war have marred the land and the people who call it home. Though the gunfire may grow quiet, the wider war unleashed globally on October 7, 2023, remains unresolved.
Hamas’s attack left families shattered. Iran has attempted to annihilate Israel multiple times directly and through its proxies on every side. The entire civilian population has lived in-and-out of bomb shelters or displaced from their homes altogether, while the young soldiers of the IDF have faced unimaginable danger to bring the captives home.
While Hamas hid behind their own children—in schools, hospitals, and UN facilities—the IDF stood in front of them to defend their nation and innocent life. 891 Israeli soldiers have been killed. The grief is deep. And yet, in the midst of so much death, God has answered prayer.
When the war subsides, I pray that all who call Israel home—Israeli and Arab—can find some measure of rest. But the trauma will remain for a long time, and the ache of what was lost will not easily fade.
The Silence That Spoke Louder
It is the silence that will be most difficult for me to forget—the near-total absence of moral clarity from much of the Western world, and from mainstream Christianity, including Christian media and the voices of prominent leaders, both national and local. I wish it were not the case, but that silence only amplified the volume of death chants and calls for Israel’s annihilation, nourishing fertile soil for antisemitism’s resurgence across the world.
It grieves me to say that in the past two years, I have never been more ashamed to be connected with Christianity. At the same time, I have never been more committed to live faithfully within it.
I have prayed often for God’s forgiveness, that he would soften the church and draw us to corporate repentance. No one is beyond his mercy, but I fear many hearts have hardened against his word.
The Cost of Silence
In the past two years, Christianity has shown that it prefers private reflection to collective repentance, indifference to conviction, and solitary prayer to shared intercession. We are told to speak less, avoid controversy, and “focus on Jesus.” Yet to be the peacemakers our Lord blessed means stepping into places that are anything but peaceful.
I fear that much of Christian leadership has remained silent not out of a desire to lead well, but out of refusal to lead when it matters most. In the face of evil, many have stood speechless—some from ignorance, some from unbelief, and some from fear.
But taking a political or theological stance that has no place for Israel does not grant us license to avoid naming evil for what it is—especially when that evil wounds the very people through whom our faith first came, including many Jewish followers of Jesus.
Yet the silence of many has made the courage of a few all the more radiant. I am deeply encouraged by the pastors, leaders, and ordinary believers who have chosen to speak and act with both righteousness and compassion. They have endured opposition and public shame, yet have stood firm in calling the nations to bless Israel, pray for her peace, and intercede for her enemies and all innocents in the crossfire.
Faithful in the Face of Evil
As believers, we are not called to outrage, activism, or to turn our pulpits into political platforms. But we are called to condemn evil, to cling to what is good, and to take up the cause of the vulnerable as if it were our own.
Every generation faces the spirit of Amalek. In ours, it looks like Hamas. It looks like the attack on the Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur. It looks like the emboldened darkness that now calls good evil and evil good. Yet even as we name evil for what it is, we must guard our hearts from becoming what we condemn.
You can grieve loss on every side.
You can pray for the peace of Jerusalem without condoning every political or military action.
You can mourn innocent lives and still believe God’s covenant stands.
And while we wait for his justice, our call remains the same: to love what God loves, to stand where he stands, and to hope in what he has promised.
The Deliverer Who Will Come
Today, I rejoice in the release of the captives and the glimpse of relative stability, prayerfully, returning to the land. I also grieve the tragic witness the church has offered in these days.
But the story of captivity is not over.
Jesus echoed the prophets, who foresaw a final day when Israel would again be surrounded by the nations. Just as God raised up deliverers in Egypt, we hold a blessed hope that he will send his Messiah once more—not as the suffering servant, but as the king who brings justice and peace.
When that day comes, it won’t be a peace deal brokered by pompous and fallen diplomats. It will be Jesus Messiah who sets free the captives and brings the Lord’s favor, forever.
Until then, we rejoice greatly in the God who never forgets what he swore.
Psalm 126
When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dreamed.
Our mouths were filled with laughter,
our tongues with songs of joy.
Then it was said among the nations,
“The Lord has done great things for them.”
The Lord has done great things for us,
and we are filled with joy.
Those who sow with tears
will reap with songs of joy.
Those who go out weeping,
carrying seed to sow,
will return with songs of joy,
carrying sheaves with them.
All scripture quotations are ESV.
A God I Have Not Known
The headlines flicker like static on a broken radio: Israel accused, Gaza in ruins, the Middle East a tinderbox waiting for a spark. At first, urgency stirred prayer.
The headlines flicker like static on a broken radio: Israel accused, Gaza in ruins, the Middle East a tinderbox waiting for a spark. At first, urgency stirred prayer. But as the rage simmers on, prayer drifts to the background. It’s easy to grow numb while the war groans on.
In the static, I asked the Lord what he was saying in this season. He led me not to prophecy or psalms, but to four quiet chapters in the Hebrew Bible: Ruth.
More Than a Love Story
The first time I studied Ruth, it was sold to me as a dating manual: “Wait for your Boaz, girls!” Later, I heard it taught as a Cinderella story of struggle and grace, or a women’s guide to friendship and redemption. Those readings aren’t wrong, but they are small.
Ruth’s story reveals something far deeper—and more dangerous.
The story begins with tragedy. A family from Bethlehem flees famine and resettles in Moab, enemy territory. There, the father and both sons die, leaving Naomi and her daughters-in-law destitute.
It’s a grim outlook for the vulnerable women bereft of their husbands. Naomi decides to head back home, perhaps hopeful that she can somehow scrape out an existence within the borders of her homeland. But as a displaced, aging widow, she’s in a dangerous position. In order to avoid dragging her daughters-in-law into it, she releases them from familial obligation, charging them to go back home to their own families and their own gods. Naomi implies “I’m a lost cause. Save yourselves while you still can.”
One daughter-in-law, Orpah, departs. But Ruth clings to her.
The Hebrew word for “cling” is the same as in Genesis 2: “a man shall cling to his wife.” Ruth utters the famous vow to Naomi:
“Where you go I will go, your people will be my people, and your God my God.”
The passage rings with the echos of Eden: bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. Ruth welds herself to Naomi, willing to accept whatever lies ahead: poverty, debt, humiliation, danger, possibly even death. United as one, they head back to Israel.
Faith in the God of Israel
Those familiar with the story know how it goes. After returning to the land, Ruth, the young and able-bodied member of the impoverished duo, gathers leftover scraps from the barley harvest in a relative’s field. Boaz notices Ruth’s devotion. He blesses her, not merely for kindness, but for seeking refuge under the wings of Israel’s God. Her loyalty to Naomi is evidence of faith in the covenant-keeping God.
“She asked him, ‘Why have I found such favor in your eyes that you notice me – a foreigner?’
Boaz replied, ‘I’ve been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband – how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before. May the LORD repay you for what you have done. May you be richly rewarded by the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.’”
Boaz blesses Ruth—an average, Gentile woman—because of her faithfulness to a powerless, wandering, Jewish refugee. He doesn’t just praise her benevolence and compassion. Instead, Boaz proclaims Ruth’s wisdom to stand by Naomi even when things looked bleak, trusting that Naomi’s God—the God of Israel—would come through for them both. Later in the story, Boaz comes through for Naomi by marrying Ruth, effectively saving both women from a life of misery and probable death.
But curiously, this time reading through Ruth I noticed it’s not the women that are the focus of the salvation narrative. It’s actually Naomi’s property and the family name that become the object of attention.
“Then Boaz announced to the elders and all the people, ‘Today you are witnesses that I have bought from Naomi all the property of Elimelek, Kilion and Mahlon. I have also acquired Ruth the Moabite, Mahlon’s widow, as my wife, in order to maintain the name of the dead with his property, so that his name will not disappear from among his family or from his home town. Today you are witnesses!’
The story ends with the birth of Obed, Ruth and Boaz’s son, grandfather of King David. But the true redemption rests with Naomi—her land restored, her family name secured, her hope renewed. And all because a Gentile woman refused to abandon her.
Ruth is not just a tale of romance or personal friendship. It is a call to the nations: love the Jewish people in their darkest hour, and trust the God who promised to bless the world through them.
The Question Ruth Sets Before Us
In times of war and rising hostility, Ruth’s story pierces me. Am I willing to love a people—and a God—I perhaps do not fully understand? Am I willing to cling to their story, even when it costs me comfort, reputation, or safety?
Too often I’ve read Ruth as if it were about me—my needs, my redemption. But Ruth confronts me with something larger: faith in Israel’s God revealed through love for Israel’s people. This dainty, often trivialized book is, in fact, a powerhouse of wisdom for Gentiles in an age of love grown cold.
The world still trembles like a tinderbox. Israel’s neighbors rage. The nations plot. And the family of Messiah suffers in the shadows of our indifference.
In Israel’s dark days—much like today—when the world was hostile and everything seemed broken, the book of Ruth revealed truth and human inadequacy. It forces us to look plainly at our hearts, prayers, commitment to scripture, and the role God expects of those who bear His name. To read Ruth responsibly, to pray rightly for neighbor and foe alike, requires humility to take ourselves out of the center.
That preaches well. But it lives hard.
Love was hard in the days of Cain, harder in the days of Noah. It was hard in Naomi’s day, and it remains hard now.
Too often, I have read Ruth in a way that remakes God in my image. I’ve settled her story into my own framework, quick to dismiss Proverbs 3:5, quick to follow Orpah’s path—turning away from a God and a people I did not know. But as scholar John Walton reminds us,
“[God] has given us sufficient revelation so we might have some sense of his plans and purposes and trust him sufficiently to become participants in those plans and purposes...Our response ought to be to acknowledge the wisdom and authority of God...our response is to trust him.”
Ruth—a powerhouse of wisdom for Gentiles in an age of love grown cold.
Meanwhile the nations reel, and the family of Messiah withers in the shade of Jonah’s tree. Like Jonah sulking under his vine, I sometimes find myself nursing resentment there too. Yet our God is faith to meet broken people under the trees. He asks: “Should I not have compassion on them too—the people I’ve loved and named as my own? If you are not willing to embrace them, you are not willing to embrace me. Am I a God you do not know?”
The chance to love like Ruth is now. The book of Ruth insists that Gentile faith is proven not by words alone, but by loyal love for the people God calls his own. Will I look on God’s people with compassion? Will I look on their enemies this way?
Give us the eyes to see, oh Lord. Give us the ears to hear. Awaken us to the call of your word and prepare our hearts for the frontier that awaits.
Don’t let our love grow cold.