Book of Common Prayer
145 1-2 I will praise you, my God and King, and bless your name each day and forever.
3 Great is Jehovah! Greatly praise him! His greatness is beyond discovery! 4 Let each generation tell its children what glorious things he does. 5 I will meditate about your glory, splendor, majesty, and miracles. 6 Your awe-inspiring deeds shall be on every tongue; I will proclaim your greatness. 7 Everyone will tell about how good you are and sing about your righteousness.
8 Jehovah is kind and merciful, slow to get angry, full of love. 9 He is good to everyone, and his compassion is intertwined with everything he does. 10 All living things shall thank you, Lord, and your people will bless you. 11 They will talk together about the glory of your kingdom and mention examples of your power. 12 They will tell about your miracles and about the majesty and glory of your reign. 13 For your kingdom never ends. You rule generation after generation.
14 The Lord lifts the fallen and those bent beneath their loads. 15 The eyes of all mankind look up to you for help; you give them their food as they need it. 16 You constantly satisfy the hunger and thirst of every living thing.
17 The Lord is fair in everything he does and full of kindness. 18 He is close to all who call on him sincerely. 19 He fulfills the desires of those who reverence and trust him; he hears their cries for help and rescues them. 20 He protects all those who love him, but destroys the wicked.
21 I will praise the Lord and call on all men everywhere to bless his holy name forever and forever.
104 1-2 I bless the Lord: O Lord my God, how great you are! You are robed with honor and with majesty and light! You stretched out the starry curtain of the heavens, 3 and hollowed out the surface of the earth to form the seas. The clouds are his chariots. He rides upon the wings of the wind. 4 The angels[a] are his messengers—his servants of fire!
5 You bound the world together so that it would never fall apart. 6 You clothed the earth with floods of waters covering up the mountains. 7-8 You spoke, and at the sound of your shout the water collected into its vast ocean beds, and mountains rose and valleys sank to the levels you decreed. 9 And then you set a boundary for the seas so that they would never again cover the earth.
10 He placed springs in the valleys and streams that gush from the mountains. 11 They give water for all the animals to drink. There the wild donkeys quench their thirst, 12 and the birds nest beside the streams and sing among the branches of the trees. 13 He sends rain upon the mountains and fills the earth with fruit. 14 The tender grass grows up at his command to feed the cattle, and there are fruit trees, vegetables, and grain for man to cultivate, 15 and wine to make him glad, and olive oil as lotion for his skin, and bread to give him strength. 16 The Lord planted the cedars of Lebanon. They are tall and flourishing. 17 There the birds make their nests, the storks in the firs. 18 High in the mountains are pastures for the wild goats, and rock badgers burrow in among the rocks and find protection there.
19 He assigned the moon to mark the months and the sun to mark the days. 20 He sends the night and darkness, when all the forest folk come out. 21 Then the young lions roar for their food, but they are dependent on the Lord. 22 At dawn they slink back into their dens to rest, 23 and men go off to work until the evening shadows fall again. 24 O Lord, what a variety you have made! And in wisdom you have made them all! The earth is full of your riches.
25 There before me lies the mighty ocean, teeming with life of every kind, both great and small. 26 And look! See the ships! And over there, the whale you made to play in the sea. 27 Every one of these depends on you to give them daily food. 28 You supply it, and they gather it. You open wide your hand to feed them, and they are satisfied with all your bountiful provision.
29 But if you turn away from them, then all is lost. And when you gather up their breath, they die and turn again to dust.
30 Then you send your Spirit, and new life is born[b] to replenish all the living of the earth. 31 Praise God forever! How he must rejoice in all his work! 32 The earth trembles at his glance; the mountains burst into flame at his touch.
33 I will sing to the Lord as long as I live. I will praise God to my last breath! 34 May he be pleased by all these thoughts about him, for he is the source of all my joy. 35 Let all sinners perish—all who refuse to praise him. But I will praise him. Hallelujah!
25 O Lord, I will honor and praise your name, for you are my God; you do such wonderful things! You planned them long ago, and now you have accomplished them, just as you said! 2 You turn mighty cities into heaps of ruins. The strongest forts are turned to rubble. Beautiful palaces in distant lands disappear and will never be rebuilt. 3 Therefore strong nations will shake with fear before you; ruthless nations will obey and glorify your name.
4 But to the poor, O Lord, you are a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, a shelter from merciless men who are like a driving rain that melts down an earthen wall. 5 As a hot, dry land is cooled by clouds, you will cool the pride of ruthless nations. 6 Here on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, the Lord Almighty will spread a wondrous feast for everyone around the world—a delicious feast of good food, with clear, well-aged wine and choice beef. 7 At that time he will remove the cloud of gloom, the pall of death that hangs over the earth; 8 he will swallow up death forever. The Lord God will wipe away all tears and take away forever all insults and mockery against his land and people. The Lord has spoken—he will surely do it!
9 In that day the people will proclaim, “This is our God in whom we trust, for whom we waited. Now at last he is here.” What a day of rejoicing!
13 When the Council saw the boldness of Peter and John and could see that they were obviously uneducated non-professionals, they were amazed and realized what being with Jesus had done for them! 14 And the Council could hardly discredit the healing when the man they had healed was standing right there beside them! 15 So they sent them out of the Council chamber and conferred among themselves.
16 “What shall we do with these men?” they asked each other. “We can’t deny that they have done a tremendous miracle, and everybody in Jerusalem knows about it. 17 But perhaps we can stop them from spreading their propaganda. We’ll tell them that if they do it again we’ll really throw the book at them.” 18 So they called them back in, and told them never again to speak about Jesus.
19 But Peter and John replied, “You decide whether God wants us to obey you instead of him! 20 We cannot stop telling about the wonderful things we saw Jesus do and heard him say.”
21 The Council then threatened them further and finally let them go because they didn’t know how to punish them without starting a riot. For everyone was praising God for this wonderful miracle— 22 the healing of a man who had been lame for forty years.
23 As soon as they were freed, Peter and John found the other disciples and told them what the Council had said.
24 Then all the believers united in this prayer:
“O Lord, Creator of heaven and earth and of the sea and everything in them— 25-26 you spoke long ago by the Holy Spirit through our ancestor King David, your servant, saying, ‘Why do the heathen rage against the Lord, and the foolish nations plan their little plots against Almighty God? The kings of the earth unite to fight against him and against the anointed Son of God!’
27 “That is what is happening here in this city today! For Herod the king, and Pontius Pilate the governor, and all the Romans—as well as the people of Israel—are united against Jesus, your anointed Son, your holy servant. 28 They won’t stop at anything that you in your wise power will let them do. 29 And now, O Lord, hear their threats, and grant to your servants great boldness in their preaching, 30 and send your healing power, and may miracles and wonders be done by the name of your holy servant Jesus.”
31 After this prayer, the building where they were meeting shook, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and boldly preached God’s message.
16 “In just a little while I will be gone, and you will see me no more; but just a little while after that, and you will see me again!”
17-18 “Whatever is he saying?” some of his disciples asked. “What is this about ‘going to the Father’? We don’t know what he means.”
19 Jesus realized they wanted to ask him so he said, “Are you asking yourselves what I mean? 20 The world will greatly rejoice over what is going to happen to me, and you will weep. But your weeping shall suddenly be turned to wonderful joy when you see me again.[a] 21 It will be the same joy as that of a woman in labor when her child is born—her anguish gives place to rapturous joy and the pain is forgotten. 22 You have sorrow now, but I will see you again and then you will rejoice; and no one can rob you of that joy. 23 At that time you won’t need to ask me for anything, for you can go directly to the Father and ask him, and he will give you what you ask for because you use my name. 24 You haven’t tried this before, but begin now.[b] Ask, using my name, and you will receive, and your cup of joy will overflow.
25 “I have spoken of these matters very guardedly, but the time will come when this will not be necessary and I will tell you plainly all about the Father. 26 Then you will present your petitions over my signature![c] And I won’t need to ask the Father to grant you these requests, 27 for the Father himself loves you dearly because you love me and believe that I came from the Father. 28 Yes, I came from the Father into the world and will leave the world and return to the Father.”
29 “At last you are speaking plainly,” his disciples said, “and not in riddles. 30 Now we understand that you know everything and don’t need anyone to tell you anything.[d] From this we believe that you came from God.”
31 “Do you finally believe this?” Jesus asked. 32 “But the time is coming—in fact, it is here—when you will be scattered, each one returning to his own home, leaving me alone. Yet I will not be alone, for the Father is with me. 33 I have told you all this so that you will have peace of heart and mind. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows; but cheer up, for I have overcome the world.”
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.