Book of Common Prayer
Psalm 87
A Psalm of the sons of Korah. A song.
1 On the holy hills stands the city [of Jerusalem and the temple] God founded.
2 The Lord loves the gates of Zion [through which the crowds of pilgrims enter from all nations] more than all the dwellings of Jacob (Israel).
3 Glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God. Selah [pause, and calmly realize what that means]!
4 I will make mention of Rahab [the poetic name for Egypt] and Babylon as among those who know [the city of God]—behold, Philistia and Tyre, with Ethiopia (Cush)—[saying], This man was born there.
5 Yes, of Zion it shall be said, This man and that man were born in her, for the Most High Himself will establish her.
6 The Lord shall count, when He registers the peoples, that this man was born there. Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!
7 The singers as well as the players on instruments shall say, All my springs (my sources of life and joy) are in you [city of our God].
Book Four
Psalm 90
A Prayer of Moses the man of God.
1 Lord, You have been our dwelling place and our refuge in all generations [says Moses].
2 Before the mountains were brought forth or ever You had formed and given birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting You are God.
3 You turn man back to dust and corruption, and say, Return, O sons of the earthborn [to the earth]!
4 For a thousand years in Your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.(A)
5 You carry away [these disobedient people, doomed to die within forty years] as with a flood; they are as a sleep [vague and forgotten as soon as they are gone]. In the morning they are like grass which grows up—
6 In the morning it flourishes and springs up; in the evening it is mown down and withers.
7 For we [the Israelites in the wilderness] are consumed by Your anger, and by Your wrath are we troubled, overwhelmed, and frightened away.
8 Our iniquities, our secret heart and its sins [which we would so like to conceal even from ourselves], You have set in the [revealing] light of Your countenance.
9 For all our days [out here in this wilderness, says Moses] pass away in Your wrath; we spend our years as a tale that is told [for we adults know we are doomed to die soon, without reaching Canaan].(B)
10 The days of our years are [a]threescore years and ten (seventy years)—or even, if by reason of strength, fourscore years (eighty years); yet is their pride [in additional years] only labor and sorrow, for it is soon gone, and we fly away.
11 Who knows the power of Your anger? [Who worthily connects this brevity of life with Your recognition of sin?] And Your wrath, who connects it with the reverent and worshipful fear that is due You?
12 So teach us to number our days, that we may get us a heart of wisdom.
13 Turn, O Lord [from Your fierce anger]! How long—? Revoke Your sentence and be compassionate and at ease toward Your servants.
14 O satisfy us with Your mercy and loving-kindness in the morning [now, before we are older], that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
15 Make us glad in proportion to the days in which You have afflicted us and to the years in which we have suffered evil.
16 Let Your work [the signs of Your power] be revealed to Your servants, and Your [glorious] majesty to their children.
17 And let the beauty and delightfulness and favor of the Lord our God be upon us; confirm and establish the work of our hands—yes, the work of our hands, confirm and establish it.
Psalm 136
1 O give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; for His mercy and loving-kindness endure forever.
2 O give thanks to the God of gods, for His mercy and loving-kindness endure forever.
3 O give thanks to the Lord of lords, for His mercy and loving-kindness endure forever—
4 To Him Who alone does great wonders, for His mercy and loving-kindness endure forever;
5 To Him Who by wisdom and understanding made the heavens, for His mercy and loving-kindness endure forever;
6 To Him Who stretched out the earth upon the waters, for His mercy and loving-kindness endure forever;
7 To Him Who made the great lights, for His mercy and loving-kindness endure forever—
8 The sun to rule over the day, for His mercy and loving-kindness endure forever;
9 The moon and stars to rule by night, for His mercy and loving-kindness endure forever;
10 To Him Who smote Egypt in their firstborn, for His mercy and loving-kindness endure forever;(A)
11 And brought out Israel from among them, for His mercy and loving-kindness endure forever;(B)
12 With a strong hand and with an outstretched arm, for His mercy and loving-kindness endure forever;
13 To Him Who divided the Red Sea into parts, for His mercy and loving-kindness endure forever;(C)
14 And made Israel to pass through the midst of it, for His mercy and loving-kindness endure forever;
15 But shook off and overthrew Pharaoh and his host into the Red Sea, for His mercy and loving-kindness endure forever;
16 To Him Who led His people through the wilderness, for His mercy and loving-kindness endure forever;
17 To Him Who smote great kings, for His mercy and loving-kindness endure forever;
18 And slew famous kings, for His mercy and loving-kindness endure forever—(D)
19 Sihon king of the Amorites, for His mercy and loving-kindness endure forever;(E)
20 And Og king of Bashan, for His mercy and loving-kindness endure forever;(F)
21 And gave their land as a heritage, for His mercy and loving-kindness endure forever;
22 Even a heritage to Israel His servant, for His mercy and loving-kindness endure forever;(G)
23 To Him Who [earnestly] remembered us in our low estate and imprinted us [on His heart], for His mercy and loving-kindness endure forever;
24 And rescued us from our enemies, for His mercy and loving-kindness endure forever;
25 To Him Who gives food to all flesh, for His mercy and loving-kindness endure forever;
26 O give thanks to the God of heaven, for His mercy and loving-kindness endure forever!
1 The word of the Lord that came to Hosea son of Beeri in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam son of Joash king of Israel.
2 When the Lord first spoke with and through Hosea, the Lord said to him, Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry and have children of [her] harlotry, for the land commits great whoredom by departing from the Lord.
3 So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim, and she became pregnant and bore him a son.
4 And the Lord said to him, Call his name Jezreel or God-sows, for yet a little while and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel and visit the punishment for it upon the house of Jehu, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel.(A)
5 And on that day I will break the bow of Israel in the Valley of Jezreel.
6 And [Gomer] conceived again and bore a daughter. And the Lord said to Hosea, Call her name Lo-Ruhamah or Not-pitied, for I will no more have love, pity, and mercy on the house of Israel, that I should in any way pardon them.
7 But I will have love, pity, and mercy on the house of Judah and will deliver them by the Lord their God and will [a]not save them by bow, nor by sword, nor by equipment of war, nor by horses, nor by horsemen.(B)
8 Now when [Gomer] had weaned Lo-Ruhamah [Not-pitied], she became pregnant [again] and bore a son.
9 And the Lord said, Call his name Lo-Ammi [Not-my-people], for you are not My people and I am not your God.
10 Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered; and instead of it being said to them, You are not My people, it shall be said to them, Sons of the Living God!(C)
11 Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together and appoint themselves one head, and they shall go up out of the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel [for the spiritually reborn Israel, a divine offspring, the people whom the Lord has blessed.](D)
2 [Hosea], say to your brethren, Ammi [or You-are-my-people], and to your sisters, Ruhamah [or You-have-been-pitied-and-have-obtained-mercy].
20 After the uproar had ceased, Paul sent for the disciples and warned and consoled and urged and encouraged them; then he embraced them and told them farewell and set forth on his journey to Macedonia.
2 Then after he had gone through those districts and had warned and consoled and urged and encouraged the brethren with much discourse, he came to Greece.
3 Having spent three months there, when a plot was formed against him by the Jews as he was about to set sail for Syria, he resolved to go back through Macedonia.
4 He was accompanied by Sopater the son of Pyrrhus from Beroea, and by the Thessalonians Aristarchus and Secundus, and Gaius of Derbe and Timothy, and the Asians Tychicus and Trophimus.
5 These went on ahead and were waiting for us [including Luke] at Troas,
6 But we [ourselves] sailed from Philippi after the days of Unleavened Bread [the Passover week], and in five days we joined them at Troas, where we remained for seven days.
7 And on the first day of the week, when we were assembled together to break bread [[a]the Lord’s Supper], Paul discoursed with them, intending to leave the next morning; and he kept on with his message until midnight.
8 Now there were numerous lights in the upper room where we were assembled,
9 And there was a young man named Eutychus sitting in the window. He was borne down with deep sleep as Paul kept on talking still longer, and [finally] completely overcome by sleep, he fell down from the third story and was picked up dead.
10 But Paul went down and bent over him and embraced him, saying, Make no ado; his life is within him.
11 When Paul had gone back upstairs and had broken bread and eaten [with them], and after he had talked confidentially and communed with them for a considerable time—until daybreak [in fact]—he departed.
12 They took the youth home alive, and were not a little comforted and cheered and refreshed and encouraged.
13 But going on ahead to the ship, the rest of us set sail for Assos, intending to take Paul aboard there, for that was what he had directed, intending himself to go by land [on foot].
14 So when he met us at Assos, we took him aboard and sailed on to Mitylene.
15 And sailing from there, we arrived the day after at a point opposite Chios; the following day we struck across to Samos, and the next day we arrived at Miletus.
16 For Paul had determined to sail on past Ephesus, lest he might have to spend time [unnecessarily] in [the province of] Asia; for he was hastening on so that he might reach Jerusalem, if at all possible, by the day of Pentecost.
38 Then He arose and left the synagogue and went into Simon’s (Peter’s) house. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was suffering in the grip of a burning fever, and they pleaded with Him for her.
39 And standing over her, He rebuked the fever, and it left her; and immediately she got up and began waiting on them.
40 Now at the setting of the sun [indicating the end of the Sabbath], all those who had any [who were] sick with various diseases brought them to Him, and He laid His hands upon every one of them and cured them.
41 And demons even came out of many people, screaming and crying out, You are the Son of God! But He rebuked them and would not permit them to speak, because they knew that He was the Christ (the Messiah).
42 And when daybreak came, He left [Peter’s house] and went into an isolated [desert] place. And the people looked for Him until they came up to Him and tried to prevent Him from leaving them.
43 But He said to them, I must preach the good news (the Gospel) of the kingdom of God to the other cities [and towns] also, for I was sent for this [purpose].
44 And He continued to preach in the synagogues of Galilee.
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