God providentially uses two exiled Israelites to rescue His people from certain doom, without any explicit mention of God or His activity!

Many Israelites return to Jerusalem after the exile, and face some success alongside many spiritual and moral failures.

Jeremiah announces that God will judge Israel’s sins with an exile to Babylon. And then, he lives through the horror of his predictions.

The Song of Songs is a collection of ancient Israelite love poems that celebrates the beauty and power of God's gift of love and sexual desire.

The book of Psalms has been designed to be the prayer and praise book of God's people as they wait for the Messiah and his coming kingdom.

Ecclesiastes opens up the possibility that, living in the fear of Yahweh, death need not rob life of meaning but, ironically, helps us live a truly good life.

The book of Proverbs invites people to live with wisdom and in the fear of the Lord in order to experience the good life.

Job explores the difficult question of God's relationship to human suffering, and invites us to trust God's wisdom and character.

We learn from Ephesians that Christians need to equip themselves and others for the work of the ministry. Using Sunday morning as the starting point, the maturing of the Church relies on community and discipleship relationships to complete the mission of making more and maturing disciples of Jesus.

Description: Paul's exhortation to the Colossians to be established in faith, reminds both them and us of the union we can have with Christ. If we have been justified, we must also grow in sanctification, not by our own strength, but by the power of Christ at work in us!