Book of Common Prayer

84 O LORD of Hosts, how lovely are Your Tabernacles!

² My soul longs, indeed, and fainted for the courts of the LORD! My heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God!

³ Indeed, the sparrow has found a house, and the swallow a nest for her; where she may lay her young by Your altars, O LORD of Hosts, my King and my God.

⁴ Blessed are those who dwell in Your House. They will ever praise You. Selah.

⁵ Blessed is the man whose strength is in You, in whose heart are Your ways.

⁶ They, going through the valley of Baca, make wells therein. The rain also covers the pools.

⁷ They go from strength to strength, until every one appears before God in Zion.

⁸ O, LORD God of Hosts, hear my prayer! Give ear, O God of Jacob! Selah.

⁹ Behold, O God Our Shield, and look upon the face of Your Anointed.

¹⁰ For a day in Your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the House of my God than to dwell in the tabernacles of wickedness.

¹¹ For the LORD God is the Sun and Shield. The LORD will give grace and glory; and He will withhold no good thing from those who walk uprightly.

¹² O, LORD of Hosts, blessed is the man who trusts in You. To him who excels: A Psalm committed to the sons of Korah

19 Now Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword.

² Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “The gods do so to me and more also if I do not make your life like one of their lives by tomorrow at this time.”

³ When he saw that, he arose and ran for his life, and came to Beersheba (which is in Judah) and left his servant there.

⁴ But he went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a Juniper tree, and desired that he might die, and said, “It is now enough! O LORD, take my soul. For I am no better than my fathers.”

⁵ And as he lay, and slept under the Juniper tree, behold, now, an Angel touched him, and said to him, “Up. Eat.”

⁶ And when he looked around, behold, there was a cake, baked on the coals, and a pot of water, by his head. So he ate and drank and returned and slept.

⁷ And the Angel of the LORD came again a second time, and touched him, and said, “Up. Eat. For you have a great journey.”

⁸ Then he arose and ate and drank and walked in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights, to Horeb, the Mount of God.

⁹ And he entered into a cave there and lodged there. And behold, the LORD spoke to him, and said to him: “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

¹⁰ And he answered, “I have been very jealous for the LORD God of Hosts. For the children of Israel have forsaken Your Covenant, broken down Your Altars, and killed Your Prophets with the sword. And I alone am left. And they seek my life, to take it away.”

¹¹ And He said, “Come out and stand upon the Mount, before the LORD.” And behold, the LORD went by. And a mighty, strong wind tore the mountains and broke the rocks before the LORD. The LORD was not in the wind. And after the wind came an earthquake. The LORD was not in the earthquake.

¹² And after the earthquake came fire. The LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a still and soft voice.

3 Do we begin to praise ourselves again? Or do we need, as some others, letters of recommendation to you, or of recommendation from you?

² You are our letter, written in our hearts, which is understood and read by all mankind;

³ in that you appear to be the letter of Christ, ministered by us, and written, not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not on tablets of stone, but on fleshly tablets of the heart.

⁴ And such trust we have through Christ toward God.

⁵ Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to think anything of ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God,

⁶ Who has also made us able ministers of the New Testament - not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

⁷ If then, the ministry of death (written with letters and engraved in stones) was glorious; so that the children of Israel could not behold the face of Moses because of the Glory of his countenance (a Glory which has gone away),

⁸ how shall not the ministry of the Spirit be more glorious?

⁹ For if the ministry of condemnation was glorious, the ministry of righteousness much more exceeds it in glory.

¹⁸ But we all, with unveiled face, behold as in a mirror the Glory of the Lord; and are changed into the same image, from glory to Glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord.