We conclude: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart, before You, YHVH, my Rock and my Redeemer, be in accordance with Your will. Another translation could read: “May the words of my mouth (what I was able to put in words) and the meditations of my heart (emotions that are beyond words) become will.” Remember, genuinely expressing our will and aligning our will to God’s will is the purpose of tefillah. The entire prayer service is an exercise in building will. God orchestrates the events of our daily lives to help us clarify what we really want, so that our will be aligned with His, so that we want to receive the blessings He wants to give us. Tefillah is certainly not meant to be a recitation of meaningless words and hopeful thoughts, but rather an expression of our innermost desires. The Talmud affirms that “the direction a person wants to go is where he is lead.” Therefore, when we want to go in God’s ways that is where God will lead us. Here again, we refer to God as, “my Rock and my Redeemer.” As noted earlier, God as our Rock conveys our total surrender to Him. With some thought, most people can remember several times in their life when they could not control a situation and were forced to surrender to God. In fact, one of these times inspired my wife and me to name our son Tzuriel which means “God is my Rock.” When we walked into the hospital on the day of his birth, a woman whose job was to welcome the patients took one look at us (we were understandably nervous) and said, “It’s time to surrender.” I truly felt that the entire situation was out of our hands. Surrender became the theme of that birth. “My Redeemer,” on the other hand, suggests empowerment and self-hood. When God redeems us, He restores our sense of self. In the final paradox, we acknowledge that God is both our Rock on whom we are completely dependent and before whom we are completely nullified, yet also our Redeemer who empowers us to take action and pray.