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.

¹⁷ “And as for you, O my flock—my people,” the Lord God says, “I will judge you and separate good from bad, sheep from goats.

¹⁸ “Is it a small thing to you, O evil shepherds, that you not only keep the best of the pastures for yourselves, but trample down the rest? That you take the best water for yourselves and muddy the rest with your feet? ¹⁹ All that’s left for my flock is what you’ve trampled down; all they have to drink is water that you’ve fouled.”

²⁰ Therefore the Lord God says: “I will surely judge between these fat shepherds and their scrawny sheep. ²¹ For these shepherds push and butt and crowd my sick and hungry flock until they’re scattered far away. ²² So I myself will save my flock; no more will they be picked on and destroyed. And I will notice which is plump and which is thin, and why!

²³ “And I will set one Shepherd over all my people, even my Servant David. He shall feed them and be a Shepherd to them.

²⁴ “And I, the Lord, will be their God, and my Servant David shall be a Prince among my people. I, the Lord, have spoken it.

²⁵ “I will make a peace pact with them and drive away the dangerous animals from the land, so that my people can safely camp in the wildest places and sleep safely in the woods. ²⁶ I will make my people and their homes around my hill a blessing. And there shall be showers, showers of blessing, for I will not shut off the rains but send them in their seasons. ²⁷ Their fruit trees and fields will yield bumper crops, and everyone will live in safety. When I have broken off their chains of slavery and delivered them from those who profiteered at their expense, they shall know I am the Lord. ²⁸ No more will other nations conquer them nor wild animals attack. They shall live in safety and no one shall make them afraid.

²⁹ “And I will raise up a notable Vine (the Messiah),^[a] in Israel so that my people will never again go hungry nor be shamed by heathen conquest. ³⁰ In this way they will know that I, the Lord their God, am with them, and that they, the people of Israel, are my people,” says the Lord God. ³¹ “You are my flock, the sheep of my pasture. You are my men and I am your God, so says the Lord.”

8 What we are saying is this: Christ, whose priesthood we have just described, is our High Priest and is in heaven at the place of greatest honor next to God himself. ² He ministers in the temple in heaven, the true place of worship built by the Lord and not by human hands.

³ And since every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices, Christ must make an offering too. ⁴ The sacrifice he offers is far better than those offered by the earthly priests. (But even so, if he were here on earth he wouldn’t even be permitted to be a priest because down here the priests still follow the old Jewish system of sacrifices.) ⁵ Their work is connected with a mere earthly model of the real tabernacle in heaven; for when Moses was getting ready to build the tabernacle, God warned him to follow exactly the pattern of the heavenly tabernacle as shown to him on Mount Sinai. ⁶ But Christ, as a Minister in heaven, has been rewarded with a far more important work than those who serve under the old laws because the new agreement that he passes on to us from God contains far more wonderful promises.

⁷ The old agreement didn’t even work. If it had, there would have been no need for another to replace it. ⁸ But God himself found fault with the old one, for he said, “The day will come when I will make a new agreement with the people of Israel and the people of Judah. ⁹ This new agreement will not be like the old one I gave to their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; they did not keep their part in that agreement, so I had to cancel it. ¹⁰ But this is the new agreement I will make with the people of Israel, says the Lord: I will write my laws in their minds so that they will know what I want them to do without my even telling them, and these laws will be in their hearts so that they will want to obey them, and I will be their God and they shall be my people. ¹¹ And no one then will need to speak to his friend or neighbor or brother, saying, ‘You, too, should know the Lord,’ because everyone, great and small, will know me already. ¹² And I will be merciful to them in their wrongdoings, and I will remember their sins no more.”

¹³ God speaks of these new promises, of this new agreement, as taking the place of the old one; for the old one is out of date now and has been put aside forever.

³⁸ As Jesus and the disciples continued on their way to Jerusalem^[a] they came to a village where a woman named Martha welcomed them into her home. ³⁹ Her sister Mary sat on the floor, listening to Jesus as he talked.

⁴⁰ But Martha was the jittery type and was worrying over the big dinner she was preparing.

She came to Jesus and said, “Sir, doesn’t it seem unfair to you that my sister just sits here while I do all the work? Tell her to come and help me.”

⁴¹ But the Lord said to her, “Martha, dear friend,^[b] you are so upset over all these details! ⁴² There is really only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it—and I won’t take it away from her!”