Book of Common Prayer
95 Oh, come, let us sing to the Lord! Give a joyous shout in honor of the Rock of our salvation!
2 Come before him with thankful hearts. Let us sing him psalms of praise. 3 For the Lord is a great God, the great King of[a] all gods. 4 He controls the formation of the depths of the earth and the mightiest mountains; all are his. 5 He made the sea and formed the land; they too are his. 6 Come, kneel before the Lord our Maker, 7 for he is our God. We are his sheep, and he is our Shepherd. Oh, that you would hear him calling you today and come to him!
8 Don’t harden your hearts as Israel did in the wilderness[b] at Meribah and Massah. 9 For there your fathers doubted me, though they had seen so many of my miracles before. My patience was severely tried by their complaints. 10 “For forty years I watched them in disgust,” the Lord God says. “They were a nation whose thoughts and heart were far away from me. They refused to accept my laws. 11 Therefore, in mighty wrath I swore that they would never enter the Promised Land, the place of rest I planned for them.”
69 1-2 Save me, O my God. The floods have risen. Deeper and deeper I sink in the mire; the waters rise around me. 3 I have wept until I am exhausted; my throat is dry and hoarse; my eyes are swollen with weeping, waiting for my God to act. 4 I cannot even count all those who hate me without cause. They are influential men, these who plot to kill me though I am innocent. They demand that I be punished for what I didn’t do.
5 O God, you know so well how stupid I am, and you know all my sins. 6 O Lord God of the armies of heaven, don’t let me be a stumbling block to those who trust in you. O God of Israel, don’t let me cause them to be confused, 7 though I am mocked and cursed and shamed for your sake. 8 Even my own brothers pretend they don’t know me! 9 My zeal for God and his work[a] burns hot within me. And because I advocate your cause, your enemies insult me even as they insult you. 10 How they scoff and mock me when I mourn and fast before the Lord! 11 How they talk about me when I wear sackcloth to show my humiliation and sorrow for my sins! 12 I am the talk of the town and the song of the drunkards. 13 But I keep right on praying to you, Lord. For now is the time—you are bending down to hear! You are ready with a plentiful supply of love and kindness. Now answer my prayer and rescue me as you promised.[b] 14 Pull me out of this mire. Don’t let me sink in. Rescue me from those who hate me, and from these deep waters I am in.
15 Don’t let the floods overwhelm me or the ocean swallow me; save me from the pit that threatens me. 16 O Jehovah, answer my prayers, for your loving-kindness is wonderful; your mercy is so plentiful, so tender and so kind. 17 Don’t hide from me,[c] for I am in deep trouble. Quick! Come and save me. 18 Come, Lord, and rescue me. Ransom me from all my enemies. 19 You know how they talk about me, and how they so shamefully dishonor me. You see them all and know what each has said.
20 Their contempt has broken my heart; my spirit is heavy within me. If even one would show some pity, if even one would comfort me! 21 For food they gave me gall; for my awful thirst they offered vinegar. 22 Let their joys[d] turn to ashes and their peace disappear; 23 let darkness, blindness, and great feebleness be theirs. 24 Pour out your fury upon them; consume them with the fierceness of your anger. 25 Let their homes be desolate and abandoned. 26 For they persecute the one you have smitten and scoff at the pain of the one you have pierced. 27 Pile their sins high and do not overlook them. 28 Let these men be blotted from the list of the living;[e] do not give them the joys of life with the righteous.
29 But rescue me, O God, from my poverty and pain. 30 Then I will praise God with my singing! My thanks will be his praise— 31 that will please him more than sacrificing a bullock or an ox. 32 The humble shall see their God at work for them. No wonder they will be so glad! All who seek for God shall live in joy. 33 For Jehovah hears the cries of his needy ones and does not look the other way.
34 Praise him, all heaven and earth! Praise him, all the seas and everything in them! 35 For God will save Jerusalem;[f] he rebuilds the cities of Judah. His people shall live in them and not be dispossessed. 36 Their children shall inherit the land; all who love his name shall live there safely.
73 How good God is to Israel—to those whose hearts are pure. 2 But as for me, I came so close to the edge of the cliff! My feet were slipping and I was almost gone. 3 For I was envious of the prosperity of the proud and wicked. 4 Yes, all through life their road is smooth![a] They grow sleek and fat. 5 They aren’t always in trouble and plagued with problems like everyone else, 6 so their pride sparkles like a jeweled necklace, and their clothing is woven of cruelty! 7 These fat cats have everything their hearts could ever wish for! 8 They scoff at God and threaten his people. How proudly they speak! 9 They boast against the very heavens, and their words strut through the earth.
10 And so God’s people are dismayed and confused and drink it all in. 11 “Does God realize what is going on?” they ask. 12 “Look at these men of arrogance; they never have to lift a finger—theirs is a life of ease; and all the time their riches multiply.”
13 Have I been wasting my time? Why take the trouble to be pure? 14 All I get out of it is trouble and woe—every day and all day long! 15 If I had really said that, I would have been a traitor to your people. 16 Yet it is so hard to explain it—this prosperity of those who hate the Lord. 17 Then one day I went into God’s sanctuary to meditate and thought about the future of these evil men. 18 What a slippery path they are on—suddenly God will send them sliding over the edge of the cliff and down to their destruction: 19 an instant end to all their happiness, an eternity of terror. 20 Their present life is only a dream! They will awaken to the truth as one awakens from a dream of things that never really were!
21 When I saw this, what turmoil filled my heart! 22 I saw myself so stupid and so ignorant; I must seem like an animal to you, O God. 23 But even so, you love me! You are holding my right hand! 24 You will keep on guiding me all my life with your wisdom and counsel, and afterwards receive me into the glories of heaven![b] 25 Whom have I in heaven but you? And I desire no one on earth as much as you! 26 My health fails; my spirits droop, yet God remains! He is the strength of my heart; he is mine forever!
27 But those refusing to worship God will perish, for he destroys those serving other gods.
28 But as for me, I get as close to him as I can! I have chosen him, and I will tell everyone about the wonderful ways he rescues me.
43 But there was no relief from the terrible famine throughout the land. 2 When the grain they had brought from Egypt was almost gone, their father said to them, “Go again and buy us a little food.”
3-5 But Judah told him, “The man wasn’t fooling one bit when he said, ‘Don’t ever come back again unless your brother is with you.’ We cannot go unless you let Benjamin go with us.”
6 “Why did you ever tell him you had another brother?” Israel moaned. “Why did you have to treat me like that?”
7 “But the man specifically asked us about our family,” they told him. “He wanted to know whether our father was still living and he asked us if we had another brother, so we told him. How could we know that he was going to say, ‘Bring me your brother’?”
8 Judah said to his father, “Send the lad with me and we will be on our way; otherwise we will all die of starvation—and not only we, but you and all our little ones. 9 I guarantee his safety. If I don’t bring him back to you, then let me bear the blame forever. 10 For we could have gone and returned by this time if you had let him come.”
11 So their father Israel finally said to them, “If it can’t be avoided, then at least do this. Load your donkeys with the best products of the land. Take them to the man as gifts—balm, honey, spices, myrrh, pistachio nuts, and almonds. 12 Take double money so that you can pay back what was in the mouths of your sacks, as it was probably someone’s mistake, 13 and take your brother and go. 14 May God Almighty give you mercy before the man, so that he will release Simeon and return Benjamin. And if I must bear the anguish of their deaths, then so be it.”
15 So they took the gifts and double money and went to Egypt, and stood before Joseph.
7 Now about those questions you asked in your last letter: my answer is that if you do not marry, it is good. 2 But usually it is best to be married, each man having his own wife, and each woman having her own husband, because otherwise you might fall back into sin.
3 The man should give his wife all that is her right as a married woman, and the wife should do the same for her husband: 4 for a girl who marries no longer has full right to her own body, for her husband then has his rights to it, too; and in the same way the husband no longer has full right to his own body, for it belongs also to his wife. 5 So do not refuse these rights to each other. The only exception to this rule would be the agreement of both husband and wife to refrain from the rights of marriage for a limited time, so that they can give themselves more completely to prayer. Afterwards, they should come together again so that Satan won’t be able to tempt them because of their lack of self-control.
6 I’m not saying you must marry, but you certainly may if you wish. 7 I wish everyone could get along without marrying, just as I do. But we are not all the same. God gives some the gift of a husband or wife, and others he gives the gift of being able to stay happily unmarried. 8 So I say to those who aren’t married and to widows—better to stay unmarried if you can, just as I am. 9 But if you can’t control yourselves, go ahead and marry. It is better to marry than to burn with lust.
35 As evening fell, Jesus said to his disciples, “Let’s cross to the other side of the lake.” 36 So they took him just as he was and started out, leaving the crowds behind (though other boats followed). 37 But soon a terrible storm arose. High waves began to break into the boat until it was nearly full of water and about to sink. 38 Jesus was asleep at the back of the boat with his head on a cushion. Frantically they wakened him, shouting, “Teacher, don’t you even care that we are all about to drown?”
39 Then he rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Quiet down!” And the wind fell, and there was a great calm!
40 And he asked them, “Why were you so fearful? Don’t you even yet have confidence in me?”
41 And they were filled with awe and said among themselves, “Who is this man, that even the winds and seas obey him?”
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.