Today’s Passage: Ruth 1:8-9

I am wondering if you pray. If you do pray, it would indicate that you believe a few things.

It means you believe in God, and not just any God, but a God who will receive your prayers, a God who loves you.

There is a contrary thought. That you pray to a God/god who does not love you, but instead one whom, at best is generally dis-interested, and at worst, one you must appease. I would suggest if that is your image of God/god, when you petition It, you are not praying, but rather negotiating and manipulating.

Prayer is different. Prayer is born out of love—is offered in love—and is sent to the One who is love.

We see this in Naomi, “…May the Lord deal kindly with you…The Lord grant that you may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband!”

Naomi’s prayer certainly is not very elaborate. It may even appear to you as more of a conversation and less as a prayer. You might be wondering why I even bring prayer up?

I bring up prayer because I have been talking about God’s Providence. Some would say, if God is in control of everything, do we need to pray?*

• Prayer is the acknowledgment, not of the psychological benefit of some mythological exercise, but of the fact that we believe that God is there. We believe that God cares, God rules and God provides, and believe it in such a way that we are ready to do something on that basis, namely speak to Him.

• Providence reminds us of our creatureliness and dependence on God, and that together with all men, we stand under God’s lordship; prayer is an activity by which we acknowledge that we cannot be our own lord.

• Providence reminds us that everything is not ultimately absurd or meaningless; prayer is our way of expressing our ‘yes’ to the conviction that God is working His purposes out in nature, men, and history.

• Providence is a reminder that the Lord is a God of grace and generosity; prayer is our way of responding to His invitation to be a member of His covenant family, His son or daughter, His co-worker in this world.

• Providence reminds us that the living God is not an irresistible fate before whom we can only keep silent and passive; prayer is our response to God’s invitation to share fellowship with Him, an expression of our union with Him.

• Prayer is, as it were, the flip side to the doctrine of providence.

Naomi’s prayer flows out of her love, her love of this all-caring God and her love for her daughters-in-law. There is this “little phrase” that is easy to miss: may the Lord deal kindly with you. The actual Hebrew word is hesed.

This Hebrew word shows up over 240 times, and we don’t realize it. We often read or translate hesed as “steadfast love”. I am not a Hebrew scholar, but as I read a few of them they create a rich tapestry of words which seek to describe hesed. The hesed of God is this kind of amazing, divine, never-ending, never- failing love. I write more about it here. In short, it is the love of God that is always there, even when we cannot feel it or see it, but we believe in it because we believe in God.

Hesed can make all the difference. It is the one strand that you can hold onto when all else has been stripped away.

In Naomi’s world, everything has been stripped away. All that is left is her God and His hesed.

I won’t ask “if” you’ve ever had “everything else stripped away”. Instead I will ask, when it has happened to you, have you prayed to this God who is hesed?

Sit for a while, and ponder God’s love. Ask his Holy Spirit to go deeper into your heart, so that your confidence in His hesed will grow.

* Atkinson, David J. The Message of Ruth (The Bible Speaks Today Series) (p. 43). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.