Book of Common Prayer
The Prayer of a Troubled Youth[a]
102 Listen to my prayer, O Lord,
and hear my cry for help!
2 When I am in trouble,
don't turn away from me!
Listen to me,
and answer me quickly when I call!
3 My life is disappearing like smoke;
my body is burning like fire.
4 I am beaten down like dry grass;
I have lost my desire for food.
5 I groan aloud;
I am nothing but skin and bones.
6 I am like a wild bird in the desert,
like an owl in abandoned ruins.
7 I lie awake;
I am like a lonely bird on a housetop.
8 All day long my enemies insult me;
those who mock me use my name in cursing.
9-10 Because of your anger and fury,
ashes are my food,
and my tears are mixed with my drink.
You picked me up and threw me away.
11 My life is like the evening shadows;
I am like dry grass.
12 But you, O Lord, are king forever;
all generations will remember you.
13 You will rise and take pity on Zion;
the time has come to have mercy on her;
this is the right time.
14 Your servants love her,
even though she is destroyed;
they have pity on her,
even though she is in ruins.
15 The nations will fear the Lord;
all the kings of the earth will fear his power.
16 When the Lord rebuilds Zion,
he will reveal his greatness.
17 He will hear his forsaken people
and listen to their prayer.
18 Write down for the coming generation what the Lord has done,
so that people not yet born will praise him.
19 The Lord looked down from his holy place on high,
he looked down from heaven to earth.
20 He heard the groans of prisoners
and set free those who were condemned to die.
21 And so his name will be proclaimed in Zion,
and he will be praised in Jerusalem
22 when nations and kingdoms come together
and worship the Lord.
23 The Lord has made me weak while I am still young;
he has shortened my life.
24 O God, do not take me away now
before I grow old.
O Lord, you live forever;
25 (A)long ago you created the earth,
and with your own hands you made the heavens.
26 They will disappear, but you will remain;
they will all wear out like clothes.
You will discard them like clothes,
and they will vanish.
27 But you are always the same,
and your life never ends.
28 Our children will live in safety,
and under your protection
their descendants will be secure.
BOOK FIVE(A)
In Praise of God's Goodness
107 (B)“Give thanks to the Lord, because he is good;
his love is eternal!”
2 Repeat these words in praise to the Lord,
all you whom he has saved.
He has rescued you from your enemies
3 and has brought you back from foreign countries,
from east and west, from north and south.[a]
4 Some wandered in the trackless desert
and could not find their way to a city to live in.
5 They were hungry and thirsty
and had given up all hope.
6 Then in their trouble they called to the Lord,
and he saved them from their distress.
7 He led them by a straight road
to a city where they could live.
8 They must thank the Lord for his constant love,
for the wonderful things he did for them.
9 He satisfies those who are thirsty
and fills the hungry with good things.
10 Some were living in gloom and darkness,
prisoners suffering in chains,
11 because they had rebelled against the commands of Almighty God
and had rejected his instructions.
12 They were worn out from hard work;
they would fall down, and no one would help.
13 Then in their trouble they called to the Lord,
and he saved them from their distress.
14 He brought them out of their gloom and darkness
and broke their chains in pieces.
15 They must thank the Lord for his constant love,
for the wonderful things he did for them.
16 He breaks down doors of bronze
and smashes iron bars.
17 Some were fools, suffering because of their sins
and because of their evil;
18 they couldn't stand the sight of food
and were close to death.
19 Then in their trouble they called to the Lord,
and he saved them from their distress.
20 He healed them with his command
and saved them from the grave.
21 They must thank the Lord for his constant love,
for the wonderful things he did for them.
22 They must thank him with sacrifices,
and with songs of joy must tell all that he has done.
23 Some sailed over the ocean in ships,
earning their living on the seas.
24 They saw what the Lord can do,
his wonderful acts on the seas.
25 He commanded, and a mighty wind began to blow
and stirred up the waves.
26 The ships were lifted high in the air
and plunged down into the depths.
In such danger the sailors lost their courage;
27 they stumbled and staggered like drunks—
all their skill was useless.
28 Then in their trouble they called to the Lord,
and he saved them from their distress.
29 He calmed the raging storm,
and the waves became quiet.
30 They were glad because of the calm,
and he brought them safe to the port they wanted.
31 They must thank the Lord for his constant love,
for the wonderful things he did for them.
32 They must proclaim his greatness in the assembly of the people
and praise him before the council of the leaders.
20 and his wife was given to the man that had been his best man at the wedding.
15 Some time later Samson went to visit his wife during the wheat harvest and took her a young goat. He told her father, “I want to go to my wife's room.”
But he wouldn't let him go in. 2 He told Samson, “I really thought that you hated her, so I gave her to your friend. But her younger sister is prettier, anyway. You can have her, instead.”
3 Samson said, “This time I'm not going to be responsible for what I do to the Philistines!” 4 So he went and caught three hundred foxes. Two at a time, he tied their tails together and put torches in the knots. 5 Then he set fire to the torches and turned the foxes loose in the Philistine wheat fields. In this way he burned up not only the wheat that had been harvested but also the wheat that was still in the fields. The olive orchards were also burned. 6 When the Philistines asked who had done this, they learned that Samson had done it because his father-in-law, a man from Timnah, had given Samson's wife to a friend of Samson's. So the Philistines went and burned the woman to death and burned down her father's house.[a]
7 Samson told them, “So this is how you act! I swear that I won't stop until I pay you back!” 8 He attacked them fiercely and killed many of them. Then he went and stayed in the cave in the cliff at Etam.
Samson Defeats the Philistines
9 The Philistines came and camped in Judah, and attacked the town of Lehi. 10 The men of Judah asked them, “Why are you attacking us?”
They answered, “We came to take Samson prisoner and to treat him as he treated us.” 11 So these three thousand men of Judah went to the cave in the cliff at Etam and said to Samson, “Don't you know that the Philistines are our rulers? What have you done to us?”
He answered, “I did to them just what they did to me.”
12 They told him, “We have come here to tie you up, so we can hand you over to them.”
Samson said, “Give me your word that you won't kill me yourselves.”
13 “All right,” they said, “we are only going to tie you up and hand you over to them. We won't kill you.” So they tied him up with two new ropes and brought him back from the cliff.
14 When he got to Lehi, the Philistines came running toward him, shouting at him. Suddenly the power of the Lord made him strong, and he broke the ropes around his arms and hands as if they were burnt thread. 15 Then he found a jawbone of a donkey that had recently died. He reached down and picked it up, and killed a thousand men with it. 16 So Samson sang,
“With the jawbone of a donkey I killed a thousand men;
With the jawbone of a donkey I piled them up in piles.”[b]
17 After that, he threw the jawbone away. The place where this happened was named Ramath Lehi.[c]
18 Then Samson became very thirsty, so he called to the Lord and said, “You gave me this great victory; am I now going to die of thirst and be captured by these heathen Philistines?” 19 Then God opened a hollow place in the ground there at Lehi, and water came out of it. Samson drank it and began to feel much better. So the spring was named Hakkore;[d] it is still there at Lehi.
20 Samson led Israel for twenty years while the Philistines ruled the land.
17 (A)“When the time drew near for God to keep the promise he had made to Abraham, the number of our people in Egypt had grown much larger. 18 At last a king who did not know about Joseph began to rule in Egypt. 19 (B)He tricked our ancestors and was cruel to them, forcing them to put their babies out of their homes, so that they would die. 20 (C)It was at this time that Moses was born, a very beautiful child. He was cared for at home for three months, 21 (D)and when he was put out of his home, the king's daughter adopted him and brought him up as her own son. 22 He was taught all the wisdom of the Egyptians and became a great man in words and deeds.
23 (E)“When Moses was forty years old, he decided to find out how his fellow Israelites were being treated. 24 He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his help and took revenge on the Egyptian by killing him. (25 He thought that his own people would understand that God was going to use him to set them free, but they did not understand.) 26 The next day he saw two Israelites fighting, and he tried to make peace between them. ‘Listen, men,’ he said, ‘you are fellow Israelites; why are you fighting like this?’ 27 But the one who was mistreating the other pushed Moses aside. ‘Who made you ruler and judge over us?’ he asked. 28 ‘Do you want to kill me, just as you killed that Egyptian yesterday?’ 29 (F)When Moses heard this, he fled from Egypt and went to live in the land of Midian. There he had two sons.
Jesus Heals an Official's Son
43 After spending two days there, Jesus left and went to Galilee. 44 (A)For he himself had said, “Prophets are not respected in their own country.” 45 (B)When he arrived in Galilee, the people there welcomed him, because they had gone to the Passover Festival in Jerusalem and had seen everything that he had done during the festival.
46 (C)Then Jesus went back to Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. A government official was there whose son was sick in Capernaum. 47 When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and asked him to go to Capernaum and heal his son, who was about to die. 48 Jesus said to him, “None of you will ever believe unless you see miracles and wonders.”
49 “Sir,” replied the official, “come with me before my child dies.”
50 Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live!”
The man believed Jesus' words and went. 51 On his way home his servants met him with the news, “Your boy is going to live!”
52 He asked them what time it was when his son got better, and they answered, “It was one o'clock yesterday afternoon when the fever left him.” 53 Then the father remembered that it was at that very hour when Jesus had told him, “Your son will live.” So he and all his family believed.
54 This was the second miracle that Jesus performed after coming from Judea to Galilee.
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.