Book of Common Prayer
A Prayer in Sickness[a]
41 Happy are those who are concerned for the poor;
the Lord will help them when they are in trouble.
2 The Lord will protect them and preserve their lives;
he will make them happy in the land;
he will not abandon them to the power of their enemies.
3 The Lord will help them when they are sick
and will restore them to health.
4 I said, “I have sinned against you, Lord;
be merciful to me and heal me.”
5 My enemies say cruel things about me.
They want me to die and be forgotten.
6 Those who come to see me are not sincere;
they gather bad news about me
and then go out and tell it everywhere.
7 All who hate me whisper to each other about me,
they imagine the worst about[b] me.
8 They say, “He is fatally ill;
he will never leave his bed again.”
9 (A)Even my best friend, the one I trusted most,
the one who shared my food,
has turned against me.
10 Be merciful to me, Lord, and restore my health,
and I will pay my enemies back.
11 They will not triumph over me,
and I will know that you are pleased with me.
12 You will help me, because I do what is right;
you will keep me in your presence forever.
13 (B)Praise the Lord, the God of Israel!
Praise him now and forever!
Amen! Amen!
(A)God's Judgment and Grace[a]
52 Why do you boast, great one, of your evil?
God's faithfulness is eternal.
2 You make plans to ruin others;
your tongue is like a sharp razor.
You are always inventing lies.
3 You love evil more than good
and falsehood more than truth.
4 You love to hurt people with your words, you liar!
5 So God will ruin you forever;
he will take hold of you and snatch you from your home;
he will remove you from the world of the living.
6 Righteous people will see this and be afraid;
then they will laugh at you and say,
7 “Look, here is someone who did not depend on God for safety,
but trusted instead in great wealth
and looked for security in being wicked.”
8 But I am like an olive tree growing in the house of God;
I trust in his constant love forever and ever.
9 I will always thank you, God, for what you have done;
in the presence of your people
I will proclaim that you are good.
A Prayer for Protection[a]
44 With our own ears we have heard it, O God—
our ancestors have told us about it,
about the great things you did in their time,
in the days of long ago:
2 how you yourself drove out the heathen
and established your people in their land;
how you punished the other nations
and caused your own to prosper.
3 Your people did not conquer the land with their swords;
they did not win it by their own power;
it was by your power and your strength,
by the assurance of your presence,
which showed that you loved them.
4 You are my king and my God;
you give[b] victory to your people,
5 and by your power we defeat our enemies.
6 I do not trust in my bow
or in my sword to save me;
7 but you have saved us from our enemies
and defeated those who hate us.
8 We will always praise you
and give thanks to you forever.
9 But now you have rejected us and let us be defeated;
you no longer march out with our armies.
10 You made us run from our enemies,
and they took for themselves what was ours.
11 You allowed us to be slaughtered like sheep;
you scattered us in foreign countries.
12 You sold your own people for a small price
as though they had little value.[c]
13 Our neighbors see what you did to us,
and they mock us and laugh at us.
14 You have made us a joke among the nations;
they shake their heads at us in scorn.
15 I am always in disgrace;
I am covered with shame
16 from hearing the sneers and insults
of my enemies and those who hate me.
17 All this has happened to us,
even though we have not forgotten you
or broken the covenant you made with us.
18 We have not been disloyal to you;
we have not disobeyed your commands.
19 Yet you left us helpless among wild animals;
you abandoned us in deepest darkness.
20 If we had stopped worshiping our God
and prayed to a foreign god,
21 you would surely have discovered it,
because you know our secret thoughts.
22 (A)But it is on your account that we are being killed all the time,
that we are treated like sheep to be slaughtered.
23 Wake up, Lord! Why are you asleep?
Rouse yourself Don't reject us forever!
24 Why are you hiding from us?
Don't forget our suffering and trouble!
25 We fall crushed to the ground;
we lie defeated in the dust.
26 Come to our aid!
Because of your constant love save us!
Achan's Sin
7 The Lord's command to Israel not to take from Jericho anything that was to be destroyed was not obeyed. A man named Achan disobeyed that order, and so the Lord was furious with the Israelites. (Achan was the son of Carmi and grandson of Zabdi, and belonged to the clan of Zerah, a part of the tribe of Judah.)
2 Joshua sent some men from Jericho to Ai, a city east of Bethel, near Bethaven, with orders to go and explore the land. When they had done so, 3 they reported back to Joshua: “There is no need for everyone to attack Ai. Send only about two or three thousand men. Don't send the whole army up there to fight; it is not a large city.” 4 So about three thousand Israelites made the attack, but they were forced to retreat. 5 The men of Ai chased them from the city gate as far as some quarries and killed about thirty-six of them on the way down the hill. Then the Israelites lost their courage and were afraid.
6 Joshua and the leaders of Israel tore their clothes in grief, threw themselves to the ground before the Lord's Covenant Box, and lay there till evening, with dust on their heads to show their sorrow. 7 And Joshua said, “Sovereign Lord! Why did you bring us across the Jordan at all? To turn us over to the Amorites? To destroy us? Why didn't we just stay on the other side of the Jordan? 8 What can I say, O Lord, now that Israel has retreated from the enemy? 9 The Canaanites and everyone else in the country will hear about it. They will surround us and kill every one of us! And then what will you do to protect your honor?”
10 The Lord said to Joshua, “Get up! Why are you lying on the ground like this? 11 Israel has sinned! They have broken the agreement with me that I ordered them to keep. They have taken some of the things condemned to destruction. They stole them, lied about it, and put them with their own things. 12 This is why the Israelites cannot stand against their enemies. They retreat from them because they themselves have now been condemned to destruction! I will not stay with you any longer unless you destroy the things you were ordered not to take! 13 Get up! Purify the people and get them ready to come before me. Tell them to be ready tomorrow, because I, the Lord God of Israel, have this to say: ‘Israel, you have in your possession some things that I ordered you to destroy! You cannot stand against your enemies until you get rid of these things!’
Duties toward One Another
8 Be under obligation to no one—the only obligation you have is to love one another. Whoever does this has obeyed the Law. 9 (A)The commandments, “Do not commit adultery; do not commit murder; do not steal; do not desire what belongs to someone else”—all these, and any others besides, are summed up in the one command, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” 10 If you love others, you will never do them wrong; to love, then, is to obey the whole Law.
11 You must do this, because you know that the time has come for you to wake up from your sleep. For the moment when we will be saved is closer now than it was when we first believed. 12 The night is nearly over, day is almost here. Let us stop doing the things that belong to the dark, and let us take up weapons for fighting in the light. 13 Let us conduct ourselves properly, as people who live in the light of day—no orgies or drunkenness, no immorality or indecency, no fighting or jealousy. 14 But take up the weapons of the Lord Jesus Christ, and stop paying attention to your sinful nature and satisfying its desires.
Jesus Prays in Gethsemane(A)
36 Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” 37 He took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee. Grief and anguish came over him, 38 and he said to them, “The sorrow in my heart is so great that it almost crushes me. Stay here and keep watch with me.”
39 He went a little farther on, threw himself face downward on the ground, and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, take this cup of suffering from me! Yet not what I want, but what you want.”
40 Then he returned to the three disciples and found them asleep; and he said to Peter, “How is it that you three were not able to keep watch with me for even one hour? 41 Keep watch and pray that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
42 Once more Jesus went away and prayed, “My Father, if this cup of suffering cannot be taken away unless I drink it, your will be done.” 43 He returned once more and found the disciples asleep; they could not keep their eyes open.
44 Again Jesus left them, went away, and prayed the third time, saying the same words. 45 Then he returned to the disciples and said, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Look! The hour has come for the Son of Man to be handed over to the power of sinners. 46 Get up, let us go. Look, here is the man who is betraying me!”
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.