Book of Common Prayer
102 A prayer when overwhelmed with trouble.
Lord, hear my prayer! Listen to my plea!
2 Don’t turn away from me in this time of my distress. Bend down your ear and give me speedy answers, 3-4 for my days disappear like smoke. My health is broken, and my heart is sick; it is trampled like grass and is withered. My food is tasteless, and I have lost my appetite. 5 I am reduced to skin and bones because of all my groaning and despair. 6 I am like a vulture in a far-off wilderness or like an owl alone in the desert. 7 I lie awake, lonely as a solitary sparrow on the roof.
8 My enemies taunt me day after day and curse at me. 9-10 I eat ashes instead of bread. My tears run down into my drink because of your anger against me, because of your wrath. For you have rejected me and thrown me out. 11 My life is passing swiftly as the evening shadows. I am withering like grass, 12 while you, Lord, are a famous King forever. Your fame will endure to every generation.
13 I know that you will come and have mercy on Jerusalem—and now is the time to pity her—the time you promised help. 14 For your people love every stone in her walls and feel sympathy for every grain of dust in her streets. 15 Now let the nations and their rulers tremble before the Lord, before his glory. 16 For Jehovah will rebuild Jerusalem! He will appear in his glory!
17 He will listen to the prayers of the destitute, for he is never too busy to heed their requests. 18 I am recording this so that future generations will also praise the Lord for all that he has done. And a people that shall be created shall praise the Lord. 19 Tell them that God looked down from his temple in heaven 20 and heard the groans of his people in slavery—they were children of death—and released them, 21-22 so that multitudes would stream to the Temple in Jerusalem to praise him, and his praises were sung throughout the city; and many rulers throughout the earth came to worship him.
23 He has cut me down in middle life, shortening my days. 24 But I cried to him, “O God, you live forever and forever! Don’t let me die halfway through my years! 25 In ages past you laid the foundations of the earth and made the heavens with your hands! 26 They shall perish, but you go on forever. They will grow old like worn-out clothing, and you will change them like a man putting on a new shirt and throwing away the old one! 27 But you yourself never grow old. You are forever, and your years never end.
28 “But our families will continue; generation after generation will be preserved by your protection.”
107 Say thank you to the Lord for being so good, for always being so loving and kind. 2 Has the Lord redeemed you? Then speak out! Tell others he has saved you from your enemies.
3 He brought the exiles back from the farthest corners of the earth. 4 They were wandering homeless in the desert, 5 hungry and thirsty and faint. 6 “Lord, help!” they cried, and he did! 7 He led them straight to safety and a place to live. 8 Oh, that these men would praise the Lord for his loving-kindness, and for all of his wonderful deeds! 9 For he satisfies the thirsty soul and fills the hungry soul with good.
10 Who are these who sit in darkness, in the shadow of death, crushed by misery and slavery? 11 They rebelled against the Lord, scorning him who is the God above all gods. 12 That is why he broke them with hard labor; they fell and none could help them rise again. 13 Then they cried to the Lord in their troubles, and he rescued them! 14 He led them from the darkness and shadow of death and snapped their chains. 15 Oh, that these men would praise the Lord for his loving-kindness and for all of his wonderful deeds! 16 For he broke down their prison gates of brass and cut apart their iron bars.
17 Others, the fools, were ill because of their sinful ways. 18 Their appetites were gone, and death was near. 19 Then they cried to the Lord in their troubles, and he helped them and delivered them. 20 He spoke, and they were healed—snatched from the door of death. 21 Oh, that these men would praise the Lord for his loving-kindness and for all of his wonderful deeds! 22 Let them tell him thank you as their sacrifice and sing about his glorious deeds.
23 And then there are the sailors sailing the seven seas, plying the trade routes of the world. 24 They, too, observe the power of God in action. 25 He calls to the storm winds; the waves rise high. 26 Their ships are tossed to the heavens and sink again to the depths; the sailors cringe in terror. 27 They reel and stagger like drunkards and are at their wit’s end. 28 Then they cry to the Lord in their trouble, and he saves them. 29 He calms the storm and stills the waves. 30 What a blessing is that stillness as he brings them safely into harbor! 31 Oh, that these men would praise the Lord for his loving-kindness and for all of his wonderful deeds! 32 Let them praise him publicly before the congregation and before the leaders of the nation.
20 So his wife was married instead to the fellow who had been best man at Samson’s wedding.
15 Later on, during the wheat harvest, Samson took a young goat as a present to his wife, intending to sleep with her; but her father wouldn’t let him in.
2 “I really thought you hated her,” he explained, “so I married her to your best man. But look, her sister is prettier than she is. Marry her instead.”
3 Samson was furious. “You can’t blame me for whatever happens now,” he shouted.
4 So he went out and caught three hundred foxes and tied their tails together in pairs, with a torch between each pair. 5 Then he lit the torches and let the foxes run through the fields of the Philistines, burning the grain to the ground along with all the sheaves and shocks of grain, and destroying the olive trees.
6 “Who did this?” the Philistines demanded.
“Samson,” was the reply, “because his wife’s father gave her to another man.” So the Philistines came and got the girl and her father and burned them alive.
7 “Now my vengeance will strike again!” Samson vowed. 8 So he attacked them with great fury and killed many of them. Then he went to live in a cave in the rock of Etam. 9 The Philistines in turn sent a huge posse into Judah and raided Lehi.
10 “Why have you come here?” the men of Judah asked.
And the Philistines replied, “To capture Samson and do to him as he has done to us.”
11 So three thousand men of Judah went down to get Samson at the cave in the rock of Etam.
“What are you doing to us?” they demanded of him. “Don’t you realize that the Philistines are our rulers?”
But Samson replied, “I only paid them back for what they did to me.”
12-13 “We have come to capture you and take you to the Philistines,” the men of Judah told him.
“All right,” Samson said, “but promise me that you won’t kill me yourselves.”
“No,” they replied, “we won’t do that.”
So they tied him with two new ropes and led him away. 14 As Samson and his captors arrived at Lehi, the Philistines shouted with glee; but then the strength of the Lord came upon Samson, and the ropes with which he was tied snapped like thread and fell from his wrists! 15 Then he picked up a donkey’s jawbone that was lying on the ground and killed a thousand Philistines with it. 16-17 Tossing away the jawbone, he remarked,
“Heaps upon heaps,
All with a donkey’s jaw!
I’ve killed a thousand men,
All with a donkey’s jaw!”
(The place has been called “Jawbone Hill” ever since.)
18 But now he was very thirsty and he prayed to the Lord and said, “You have given Israel such a wonderful deliverance through me today! Must I now die of thirst and fall to the mercy of these heathen?” 19 So the Lord caused water to gush out from a hollow in the ground, and Samson’s spirit was revived as he drank. Then he named the place “The Spring of the Man Who Prayed,” and the spring is still there today.
20 Samson was Israel’s leader for the next twenty years, but the Philistines still controlled the land.
17-18 “As the time drew near when God would fulfill his promise to Abraham to free his descendants from slavery, the Jewish people greatly multiplied in Egypt; but then a king was crowned who had no respect for Joseph’s memory. 19 This king plotted against our race, forcing parents to abandon their children in the fields.
20 “About that time Moses was born—a child of divine beauty. His parents hid him at home for three months, 21 and when at last they could no longer keep him hidden and had to abandon him, Pharaoh’s daughter found him and adopted him as her own son, 22 and taught him all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he became a mighty prince and orator.
23 “One day as he was nearing his fortieth birthday, it came into his mind to visit his brothers, the people of Israel. 24 During this visit he saw an Egyptian mistreating a man of Israel. So Moses killed the Egyptian. 25 Moses supposed his brothers would realize that God had sent him to help them, but they didn’t.
26 “The next day he visited them again and saw two men of Israel fighting. He tried to be a peacemaker. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘you are brothers and shouldn’t be fighting like this! It is wrong!’
27 “But the man in the wrong told Moses to mind his own business. ‘Who made you a ruler and judge over us?’ he asked. 28 ‘Are you going to kill me as you killed that Egyptian yesterday?’
29 “At this, Moses fled the country and lived in the land of Midian, where his two sons were born.
43-44 At the end of the two days’ stay he went on into Galilee. Jesus used to say, “A prophet is honored everywhere except in his own country!” 45 But the Galileans welcomed him with open arms, for they had been in Jerusalem at the Passover celebration and had seen some of his miracles.[a]
46-47 In the course of his journey through Galilee he arrived at the town of Cana, where he had turned the water into wine. While he was there, a man in the city of Capernaum, a government official, whose son was very sick, heard that Jesus had come from Judea and was traveling in Galilee. This man went over to Cana, found Jesus, and begged him to come to Capernaum with him and heal his son, who was now at death’s door.
48 Jesus asked, “Won’t any of you believe in me unless I do more and more miracles?”
49 The official pled, “Sir, please come now before my child dies.”
50 Then Jesus told him, “Go back home. Your son is healed!” And the man believed Jesus and started home. 51 While he was on his way, some of his servants met him with the news that all was well—his son had recovered. 52 He asked them when the lad had begun to feel better, and they replied, “Yesterday afternoon at about one o’clock his fever suddenly disappeared!” 53 Then the father realized it was the same moment that Jesus had told him, “Your son is healed.” And the officer and his entire household believed that Jesus was the Messiah.
54 This was Jesus’ second miracle in Galilee after coming from Judea.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.