Each day with God enables the Spirit to encircle your heart. Take the opportunity today to read Judges 19 so the word can enter through your mind, into your body, and settle in your heart. Thoughts and ideas will form that you can share with others.

In today’s passage, we read that the nation of Israel was in a time of decline and so was the life of an unemployed Levite. The Religious leader had a concubine and she had left him to return to her home. After about four months, the Levite goes to her home where her father was hospitable to the Levite.

In those days, a great amount of value was placed on being hospitable. The father of the concubine invites the Levite to stay so they could eat, drink, and have conversation. Every time the Levite says they are leaving to go home, the father invites them to stay another night. 

In the afternoon of the fifth day, the Levite, his concubine, and a young servant start their return trip home to the hill country of Ephraim. It was a long trip so they needed a place to stay along the way and an old man living in Gibeah invited them to stay with him.

That evening, some wicked men of the city surrounded the house of the old man and demanded that he bring the Levite out so they could have sex with him. The concubine was offered to them instead and they rape and abused her throughout the night.

The next morning, the Levite gets up to go home and outside near the door is his dead concubine. He puts her dead body on his donkey and sets out for home. When he arrives home, he cuts up the body of his concubine into twelve parts and sends the parts to each of the twelve tribes of Israel. 

What happens as recorded in today’s passage is similar to what is recorded in Genesis 19:1-11 at Sodom and Gomorrah. Israel had reached a point of total moral decay. We see that removing Godly principles from a society has disastrous effects.

Some happenings in society are so horrible that they make us wake up from ill-advised indifference.  We need to consider what’s going on, speak our minds, make a stand, and impact the world with ideas to purge this moral contamination.

This day with you Lord, we follow Your plan and are ready to make a stand. We start now to take the first step. You will guide our steps to do what needs to be done. When the tough times come, we will have confidence in our ability to make a stand because You are with us. Amen.