One Word
This winter on The Daily Pattern we’re in a series called One Word. Each day we take one word – a feeling or circumstance – and bring a word from God to it. Let the Word of God speak to your life.
Invocation
Make the sign of the cross, and say,
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Invitation Prayer
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” (Matt. 5:5) O Lord, I am lowly and humble. You alone are my inheritance. Amen.
Meditation
Valor
an excerpt from Rachel Held Evans
In Rachel Held Evans’s blog post, “3 Things You Might Not Know about Proverbs 31,” she explores how it is not the nature of our vocations that define us as Christians but rather how we fulfill them. As Evans discusses the paragon of the Proverbs 31 woman and makes comparisons to the Book of Ruth, she demonstrates how a life of valor is not found in the tasks people complete but rather how they live their lives. Both the established and prosperous Proverbs 31 woman and Ruth, an impoverished immigrant at the beginning of her story, live with generosity, courage, wisdom, and kindness.
The poetic figure found in Proverbs 31 is not the only woman in the Bible to receive the high praise of, “eshet chayil!” or “woman of valor!”
So did Ruth.
Ruth was a destitute foreigner whose daily work involved gathering, threshing, and winnowing wheat. For most of her story, she is neither a wife nor a mother. Circumstantially, her life looked nothing like the life of the woman depicted in Proverbs 31.
Ruth didn’t spend her days making clothes for her husband. She had no husband; she was widowed.
Ruth’s children didn’t rise up and call her blessed. She was childless.
Ruth didn’t spend her days exchanging fine linens with the merchants and keeping an immaculate home. She worked all day in the sun, gleaning leftovers from other people’s fields, which was a provision made for the poorest of the poor in Israel.
And yet guess what Boaz says of Ruth before she gets married, before she has a child, before she becomes a wealthy and influential woman: “All the people of my town know that you are a woman of noble character” (Ruth 3:11).
The Hebrew that’s used there is “eshet chayil” – woman of valor.
Ruth is identified as a woman of valor, not because checked off some Proverbs 31 to-do list by getting married, keeping a clean house and producing children, but because she lived her life with incredible bravery, wisdom, and strength. She lived her life with valor.
~Rachel Held Evans, excerpt located at rachelheldevans.com
Prayer for Family
· For my immediate family (parents, spouse, siblings).
· For extended family (cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents)
· For close friends that are as family to me.
· For those who don’t have families, or whose families are broken.
· For forgiveness and reconciliation where there is division in my family.
· For provision where there is need in my family.
· For God to be the foundation, and the cross the center of my family.
· For a generation yet unborn, future members of our family.
Closing Prayer
O Lord and King, your Kingdom comes even without our prayer. But we pray that it would also come among us. We are desperate for your reign and rule, for all we see is rebellion. Come into my heart, my home, my family, my work, my church, my community. Rule with justice and with mercy. Come, Lord Jesus. Amen.