Morning Prayer Thursday, 28 October 2021
A reading from the Book of Ruth
16 … Ruth replied, ‘Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. 17 Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.’ 18 When Naomi realised that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.
19 So the two women went on until they came to Bethlehem. When they arrived in Bethlehem, the whole town was stirred because of them, and the women exclaimed, ‘Can this be Naomi?’
20 ‘Don’t call me Naomi,’ she told them. ‘Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. 21 I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty. Why call me Naomi? The Lord has afflicted me; the Almighty has brought misfortune upon me.’
22 So Naomi returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, arriving in Bethlehem as the barley harvest was beginning.
Ruth 1: 16–22 NIV®
Dear God, we thank you for the story of Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi
and what it teaches us about the importance of close, strong relationships,
about recognising the importance of family connections
and the need for perseverance in the face of difficulties.
Many of us, in these difficult and uncertain times, feel now as Naomi did then,
that their life is very bitter and empty.
May they and we, like Naomi, put our trust in you,
and also recognise the value of a close relationship, like that of Ruth and Naomi.
Grant that we, like Naomi, may recognise where we should turn to,
or return to, in order to find the support we need.
May we, too, accept the need to support one another,
even when we may feel that we have nothing to offer.
Like Naomi, who felt that you, God, had afflicted her, and left her empty,
may we never turn away from you, but accept that,
so long as we put our faith in you, we shall not be overcome.
Naomi recognised the need to be among her own people,
who were all followers of your commandments to support their nearest kin.
May we recognise when it falls to us to carry out these commitments to our family.
Help us to recognise that, as we are all your children, we are all kin to one another,
and we must support the members of our community in their hour of need.
Even when all seemed dark and bleak to Naomi and Ruth,
when they arrived in Bethlehem, it was the beginning of the barley harvest,
and there was the prospect of better times ahead.
We pray that even now, when it may be difficult to be optimistic about the outcome of COP26
and the end of the pandemic still seems a distant prospect,
we recognise the possibilities that the future provides.
We pray for your help in playing our part in realising these possibilities
and working together, within our community, for a stable and satisfactory outcome for us all.
We end our prayers this morning by saying together the words that Jesus taught us:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power,
and the glory are yours
now and for ever.
Amen
