Book of Common Prayer

119 Happy are all who perfectly follow the laws of God. ² Happy are all who search for God and always do his will, ³ rejecting compromise with evil and walking only in his paths. ⁴ You have given us your laws to obey— ⁵ oh, how I want to follow them consistently. ⁶ Then I will not be disgraced, for I will have a clean record.

⁷ After you have corrected me,^[a] I will thank you by living as I should! ⁸ I will obey! Oh, don’t forsake me and let me slip back into sin again.^[b]

⁹ How can a young man stay pure? By reading your Word and following its rules. ¹⁰ I have tried my best to find you—don’t let me wander off from your instructions. ¹¹ I have thought much about your words and stored them in my heart so that they would hold me back from sin.

¹² Blessed Lord, teach me your rules. ¹³ I have recited your laws ¹⁴ and rejoiced in them more than in riches. ¹⁵ I will meditate upon them and give them my full respect. ¹⁶ I will delight in them and not forget them.

¹⁷ Bless me with life^[c] so that I can continue to obey you. ¹⁸ Open my eyes to see wonderful things in your Word. ¹⁹ I am but a pilgrim here on earth: how I need a map—and your commands are my chart and guide. ²⁰ I long for your instructions more than I can tell.

²¹ You rebuke those cursed proud ones who refuse your commands— ²² don’t let them scorn me for obeying you. ²³ For even princes sit and talk against me, but I will continue in your plans. ²⁴ Your laws are both my light and my counselors.

12 Lord! Help! Godly men are fast disappearing. Where in all the world can dependable men be found? ² Everyone deceives and flatters and lies. There is no sincerity left.

^3-4 But the Lord will not deal gently with people who act like that; he will destroy those proud liars who say, “We will lie to our heart’s content. Our lips are our own; who can stop us?”

⁵ The Lord replies, “I will arise and defend the oppressed, the poor, the needy. I will rescue them as they have longed for me to do.” ⁶ The Lord’s promise is sure. He speaks no careless word; all he says is purest truth, like silver seven times refined. ⁷ O Lord, we know that you will forever preserve your own from the reach of evil men, ⁸ although they prowl on every side and vileness is praised throughout the land.

13 How long will you forget me, Lord? Forever? How long will you look the other way when I am in need? ² How long must I be hiding daily anguish in my heart? How long shall my enemy have the upper hand?

³ Answer me, O Lord my God; give me light in my darkness lest I die. ⁴ Don’t let my enemies say, “We have conquered him!” Don’t let them gloat that I am down.

⁵ But I will always trust in you and in your mercy and shall rejoice in your salvation. ⁶ I will sing to the Lord because he has blessed me so richly.

14 That man is a fool who says to himself, “There is no God!” Anyone who talks like that is warped and evil and cannot really be a good person at all.

² The Lord looks down from heaven on all mankind to see if there are any who are wise, who want to please God. ³ But no, all have strayed away; all are rotten with sin. Not one is good, not one! ⁴ They eat my people like bread and wouldn’t think of praying! Don’t they really know any better?

⁵ Terror shall grip them, for God is with those who love him. ⁶ He is the refuge of the poor and humble when evildoers are oppressing them. ⁷ Oh, that the time of their rescue were already here, that God would come from Zion now to save his people. What gladness when the Lord has rescued Israel!

²⁵ “In the future, when your children and grandchildren are born and you have been in the land a long time, and you have defiled yourselves by making idols, and the Lord your God is very angry because of your sin, ²⁶ heaven and earth are witnesses that you shall be quickly destroyed from the land. Soon now you will cross the Jordan River and conquer that land. But your days there will be brief; you will then be utterly destroyed. ²⁷ For the Lord will scatter you among the nations, and you will be but few in number. ²⁸ There, far away, you will worship idols made from wood and stone, idols that neither see nor hear nor eat nor smell.

²⁹ “But you will also begin to search again for Jehovah your God, and you will find him when you search for him with all your heart and soul. ³⁰ When those bitter days have come upon you in the latter times, you will finally return to the Lord your God and listen to what he tells you. ³¹ For the Lord your God is merciful—he will not abandon you nor destroy you nor forget the promises he has made to your ancestors.

²¹ I’m ashamed to say that I’m not strong and daring like that!

But whatever they can boast about—I’m talking like a fool again—I can boast about it, too.)

²² They brag that they are Hebrews, do they? Well, so am I. And they say that they are Israelites, God’s chosen people? So am I. And they are descendants of Abraham? Well, I am too.

²³ They say they serve Christ? But I have served him far more! (Have I gone mad to boast like this?) I have worked harder, been put in jail more often, been whipped times without number, and faced death again and again and again. ²⁴ Five different times the Jews gave me their terrible thirty-nine lashes. ²⁵ Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. Once I was in the open sea all night and the whole next day. ²⁶ I have traveled many weary miles and have been often in great danger from flooded rivers and from robbers and from my own people, the Jews, as well as from the hands of the Gentiles. I have faced grave dangers from mobs in the cities and from death in the deserts and in the stormy seas and from men who claim to be brothers in Christ but are not. ²⁷ I have lived with weariness and pain and sleepless nights. Often I have been hungry and thirsty and have gone without food; often I have shivered with cold, without enough clothing to keep me warm.

²⁸ Then, besides all this, I have the constant worry of how the churches are getting along: ²⁹ Who makes a mistake and I do not feel his sadness? Who falls without my longing to help him? Who is spiritually hurt without my fury rising against the one who hurt him?

³⁰ But if I must brag, I would rather brag about the things that show how weak I am. ³¹ God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is to be praised forever and ever, knows I tell the truth. ³² For instance, in Damascus the governor under King Aretas kept guards at the city gates to catch me; ³³ but I was let down by rope and basket from a hole in the city wall, and so I got away! What popularity!^[a]

²⁴ “You cannot serve two masters: God and money. For you will hate one and love the other, or else the other way around.

²⁵ “So my counsel is: Don’t worry about things—food, drink, and clothes. For you already have life and a body—and they are far more important than what to eat and wear. ²⁶ Look at the birds! They don’t worry about what to eat—they don’t need to sow or reap or store up food—for your heavenly Father feeds them. And you are far more valuable to him than they are. ²⁷ Will all your worries add a single moment to your life?

²⁸ “And why worry about your clothes? Look at the field lilies! They don’t worry about theirs. ²⁹ Yet King Solomon in all his glory was not clothed as beautifully as they. ³⁰ And if God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow, won’t he more surely care for you, O men of little faith?

^31-32 “So don’t worry at all about having enough food and clothing. Why be like the heathen? For they take pride in all these things and are deeply concerned about them. But your heavenly Father already knows perfectly well that you need them, ³³ and he will give them to you if you give him first place in your life and live as he wants you to.

³⁴ “So don’t be anxious about tomorrow. God will take care of your tomorrow too. Live one day at a time.^[a]