Today, I received hard evidence that the soft cover version of The Gospel of Ruth: Loving God Enough to Break the Rules is in print when UPS delivered my advance copy. 

If you think you’ve already heard all there is to say about the book of Ruth, think again!  That’s what I thought, until I started hearing what Old Testament scholars were uncovering as they continued to dig in this ancient book. Believe me, this is not the Ruth, Naomi, or Boaz we’ve always known. And all three of them have been short-changed by traditional interpretations.

Here’s what I wrote in the preface:

“For a long, long time we’ve all been looking at the lives of Naomi and Ruth (as well as other women in the Bible) through the wrong end of the telescope.  Their lives have all too often been diminished in size, noticeably small next to the larger lives of the men in their stories. This has influenced how we see ourselves. Even when Ruth does something remarkable and brave, evangelicals have tended to turn her story in to a romance and Boaz into the hero who comes to her rescue.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

I never will forget the day someone turned the telescope around for me and I saw Naomi and Ruth in truer perspective.  I wept to think of how much more I could have (should have) done and was indeed called by God to do with my life.  Life-sized at last, Ruth became for me the most powerful and challenging role model I’ve yet to encounter in the Bible.

—The Gospel of Ruth

The official release date (at least on Amazon) is January 18.  If you haven’t read it yet, I hope you will! There’s also a Kindle edition.