Book of Common Prayer
(A)In Praise of God's Goodness[a]
34 I will always thank the Lord;
I will never stop praising him.
2 I will praise him for what he has done;
may all who are oppressed listen and be glad!
3 Proclaim with me the Lord's greatness;
let us praise his name together!
4 I prayed to the Lord, and he answered me;
he freed me from all my fears.
5 The oppressed look to him and are glad;
they will never be disappointed.
6 The helpless call to him, and he answers;
he saves them from all their troubles.
7 His angel guards those who honor the Lord
and rescues them from danger.
8 (B)Find out for yourself how good the Lord is.
Happy are those who find safety with him.
9 Honor the Lord, all his people;
those who obey him have all they need.
10 Even lions go hungry for lack of food,
but those who obey the Lord lack nothing good.
11 Come, my young friends, and listen to me,
and I will teach you to honor the Lord.
12 (C)Would you like to enjoy life?
Do you want long life and happiness?
13 Then keep from speaking evil
and from telling lies.
14 Turn away from evil and do good;
strive for peace with all your heart.
15 The Lord watches over the righteous
and listens to their cries;
16 but he opposes those who do evil,
so that when they die, they are soon forgotten.
17 The righteous call to the Lord, and he listens;
he rescues them from all their troubles.
18 The Lord is near to those who are discouraged;
he saves those who have lost all hope.
19 Good people suffer many troubles,
but the Lord saves them from them all;
20 (D)the Lord preserves them completely;
not one of their bones is broken.
21 Evil will kill the wicked;
those who hate the righteous will be punished.
22 The Lord will save his people;
those who go to him for protection will be spared.
A Song of Praise
33 All you that are righteous,
shout for joy for what the Lord has done;
praise him, all you that obey him.
2 Give thanks to the Lord with harps,
sing to him with stringed instruments.
3 Sing a new song to him,
play the harp with skill, and shout for joy!
4 The words of the Lord are true,
and all his works are dependable.
5 The Lord loves what is righteous and just;
his constant love fills the earth.
6 The Lord created the heavens by his command,
the sun, moon, and stars by his spoken word.
7 He gathered all the seas into one place;
he shut up the ocean depths in storerooms.
8 Worship the Lord, all the earth!
Honor him, all peoples of the world!
9 When he spoke, the world was created;
at his command everything appeared.
10 The Lord frustrates the purposes of the nations;
he keeps them from carrying out their plans.
11 But his plans endure forever;
his purposes last eternally.
12 Happy is the nation whose God is the Lord;
happy are the people he has chosen for his own!
13 The Lord looks down from heaven
and sees all of us humans.
14 From where he rules, he looks down
on all who live on earth.
15 He forms all their thoughts
and knows everything they do.
16 (A)A king does not win because of his powerful army;
a soldier does not triumph because of his strength.
17 War horses are useless for victory;
their great strength cannot save.
18 The Lord watches over those who obey him,
those who trust in his constant love.
19 He saves them from death;
he keeps them alive in times of famine.
20 We put our hope in the Lord;
he is our protector and our help.
21 We are glad because of him;
we trust in his holy name.
22 May your constant love be with us, Lord,
as we put our hope in you.
Elijah on Mount Sinai
19 King Ahab told his wife Jezebel everything that Elijah had done and how he had put all the prophets of Baal to death. 2 She sent a message to Elijah: “May the gods strike me dead if by this time tomorrow I don't do the same thing to you that you did to the prophets.” 3 Elijah was afraid and fled for his life; he took his servant and went to Beersheba in Judah.
Leaving the servant there, 4 (A)Elijah walked a whole day into the wilderness. He stopped and sat down in the shade of a tree and wished he would die. “It's too much, Lord,” he prayed. “Take away my life; I might as well be dead!”
5 He lay down under the tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said, “Wake up and eat.” 6 He looked around and saw a loaf of bread and a jar of water near his head. He ate and drank, and lay down again. 7 The Lord's angel returned and woke him up a second time, saying, “Get up and eat, or the trip will be too much for you.” 8 Elijah got up, ate and drank, and the food gave him enough strength to walk forty days to Sinai, the holy mountain.
The Unity of the Body
4 I urge you, then—I who am a prisoner because I serve the Lord: live a life that measures up to the standard God set when he called you. 2 (A)Be always humble, gentle, and patient. Show your love by being tolerant with one another. 3 Do your best to preserve the unity which the Spirit gives by means of the peace that binds you together. 4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as there is one hope to which God has called you. 5 There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 there is one God and Father of all people, who is Lord of all, works through all, and is in all.
7 Each one of us has received a special gift in proportion to what Christ has given. 8 (B)As the scripture says,
“When he went up to the very heights,
he took many captives with him;
he gave gifts to people.”
9 Now, what does “he went up” mean? It means that first he came down to the lowest depths of the earth.[a] 10 So the one who came down is the same one who went up, above and beyond the heavens, to fill the whole universe with his presence. 11 It was he who “gave gifts to people”; he appointed some to be apostles, others to be prophets, others to be evangelists, others to be pastors and teachers. 12 He did this to prepare all God's people for the work of Christian service, in order to build up the body of Christ. 13 And so we shall all come together to that oneness in our faith and in our knowledge of the Son of God; we shall become mature people, reaching to the very height of Christ's full stature. 14 Then we shall no longer be children, carried by the waves and blown about by every shifting wind of the teaching of deceitful people, who lead others into error by the tricks they invent. 15 Instead, by speaking the truth in a spirit of love, we must grow up in every way to Christ, who is the head. 16 (C)Under his control all the different parts of the body fit together, and the whole body is held together by every joint with which it is provided. So when each separate part works as it should, the whole body grows and builds itself up through love.
Jesus Feeds Five Thousand(A)
6 After this, Jesus went across Lake Galilee (or, Lake Tiberias, as it is also called). 2 A large crowd followed him, because they had seen his miracles of healing the sick. 3 Jesus went up a hill and sat down with his disciples. 4 The time for the Passover Festival was near. 5 Jesus looked around and saw that a large crowd was coming to him, so he asked Philip, “Where can we buy enough food to feed all these people?” (6 He said this to test Philip; actually he already knew what he would do.)
7 Philip answered, “For everyone to have even a little, it would take more than two hundred silver coins[a] to buy enough bread.”
8 Another one of his disciples, Andrew, who was Simon Peter's brother, said, 9 “There is a boy here who has five loaves of barley bread and two fish. But they will certainly not be enough for all these people.”
10 “Make the people sit down,” Jesus told them. (There was a lot of grass there.) So all the people sat down; there were about five thousand men. 11 Jesus took the bread, gave thanks to God, and distributed it to the people who were sitting there. He did the same with the fish, and they all had as much as they wanted. 12 When they were all full, he said to his disciples, “Gather the pieces left over; let us not waste a bit.” 13 So they gathered them all and filled twelve baskets with the pieces left over from the five barley loaves which the people had eaten.
14 Seeing this miracle that Jesus had performed, the people there said, “Surely this is the Prophet[b] who was to come into the world!”
Good News Translation® (Today’s English Version, Second Edition) © 1992 American Bible Society. All rights reserved. For more information about GNT, visit www.bibles.com and www.gnt.bible.