Book of Common Prayer
A Cry for Help
A prayer of a person who is suffering when he is discouraged and tells the Lord his complaints.
102 Lord, listen to my prayer;
let my cry for help come to you.
2 Do not hide from me
in my time of trouble.
Pay attention to me.
When I cry for help, answer me quickly.
3 My life is passing away like smoke,
and my bones are burned up with fire.
4 My heart is like grass
that has been cut and dried.
I forget to eat.
5 Because of my grief,
my skin hangs on my bones.
6 I am like a desert owl,
like an owl living among the ruins.
7 I lie awake.
I am like a lonely bird on a housetop.
8 All day long enemies insult me;
those who make fun of me use my name as a curse.
9 I eat ashes for food,
and my tears fall into my drinks.
10 Because of your great anger,
you have picked me up and thrown me away.
11 My days are like a passing shadow;
I am like dried grass.
12 But, Lord, you rule forever,
and your fame goes on and on.
13 You will come and have mercy on Jerusalem,
because the time has now come to be kind to her;
the right time has come.
14 Your servants love even her stones;
they even care about her dust.
15 Nations will fear the name of the Lord,
and all the kings on earth will honor you.
16 The Lord will rebuild Jerusalem;
there his glory will be seen.
17 He will answer the prayers of the needy;
he will not reject their prayers.
18 Write these things for the future
so that people who are not yet born will praise the Lord.
19 The Lord looked down from his holy place above;
from heaven he looked down at the earth.
20 He heard the moans of the prisoners,
and he freed those sentenced to die.
21 The name of the Lord will be heard in Jerusalem;
his praise will be heard there.
22 People will come together,
and kingdoms will serve the Lord.
23 God has made me tired of living;
he has cut short my life.
24 So I said, “My God, do not take me in the middle of my life.
Your years go on and on.
25 In the beginning you made the earth,
and your hands made the skies.
26 They will be destroyed, but you will remain.
They will all wear out like clothes.
And, like clothes, you will change them
and throw them away.
27 But you never change,
and your life will never end.
28 Our children will live in your presence,
and their children will remain with you.”
God Saves from Many Dangers
107 Thank the Lord because he is good.
His love continues forever.
2 That is what those whom the Lord has saved should say.
He has saved them from the enemy
3 and has gathered them from other lands,
from east and west, north and south.
4 Some people had wandered in the desert lands.
They found no city in which to live.
5 They were hungry and thirsty,
and they were discouraged.
6 In their misery they cried out to the Lord,
and he saved them from their troubles.
7 He led them on a straight road
to a city where they could live.
8 Let them give thanks to the Lord for his love
and for the miracles he does for people.
9 He satisfies the thirsty
and fills up the hungry.
10 Some sat in gloom and darkness;
they were prisoners suffering in chains.
11 They had turned against the words of God
and had refused the advice of God Most High.
12 So he broke their pride by hard work.
They stumbled, and no one helped.
13 In their misery they cried out to the Lord,
and he saved them from their troubles.
14 He brought them out of their gloom and darkness
and broke their chains.
15 Let them give thanks to the Lord for his love
and for the miracles he does for people.
16 He breaks down bronze gates
and cuts apart iron bars.
17 Some fools turned against God
and suffered for the evil they did.
18 They refused to eat anything,
so they almost died.
19 In their misery they cried out to the Lord,
and he saved them from their troubles.
20 God gave the command and healed them,
so they were saved from dying.
21 Let them give thanks to the Lord for his love
and for the miracles he does for people.
22 Let them offer sacrifices to thank him.
With joy they should tell what he has done.
23 Others went out to sea in ships
and did business on the great oceans.
24 They saw what the Lord could do,
the miracles he did in the deep oceans.
25 He spoke, and a storm came up,
which blew up high waves.
26 The ships were tossed as high as the sky and fell low to the depths.
The storm was so bad that they lost their courage.
27 They stumbled and fell like people who were drunk.
They did not know what to do.
28 In their misery they cried out to the Lord,
and he saved them from their troubles.
29 He stilled the storm
and calmed the waves.
30 They were happy that it was quiet,
and God guided them to the port they wanted.
31 Let them give thanks to the Lord for his love
and for the miracles he does for people.
32 Let them praise his greatness in the meeting of the people;
let them praise him in the meeting of the elders.
20 And Samson’s wife was given to his best man.
Samson Troubles the Philistines
15 At the time of the wheat harvest, Samson went to visit his wife, taking a young goat with him. He said, “I’m going to my wife’s room,” but her father would not let him go in.
2 He said to Samson, “I thought you really hated your wife, so I gave her to your best man. Her younger sister is more beautiful. Take her instead.”
3 But Samson said to them, “This time no one will blame me for hurting you Philistines!” 4 So Samson went out and caught three hundred foxes. He took two foxes at a time, tied their tails together, and then tied a torch to the tails of each pair of foxes. 5 After he lit the torches, he let the foxes loose in the grainfields of the Philistines so that he burned up their standing grain, the piles of grain, their vineyards, and their olive trees.
6 The Philistines asked, “Who did this?”
Someone told them, “Samson, the son-in-law of the man from Timnah, did because his father-in-law gave his wife to his best man.”
So the Philistines burned Samson’s wife and her father to death. 7 Then Samson said to the Philistines, “Since you did this, I won’t stop until I pay you back!” 8 Samson attacked the Philistines and killed many of them. Then he went down and stayed in a cave in the rock of Etam.
9 The Philistines went up and camped in the land of Judah, near a place named Lehi. 10 The men of Judah asked them, “Why have you come here to fight us?”
They answered, “We have come to make Samson our prisoner, to pay him back for what he did to our people.”
11 Then three thousand men of Judah went to the cave in the rock of Etam and said to Samson, “What have you done to us? Don’t you know that the Philistines rule over us?”
Samson answered, “I only paid them back for what they did to me.”
12 Then they said to him, “We have come to tie you up and to hand you over to the Philistines.”
Samson said to them, “Promise me you will not hurt me yourselves.”
13 The men from Judah said, “We agree. We will just tie you up and give you to the Philistines. We will not kill you.” So they tied Samson with two new ropes and led him up from the cave in the rock. 14 When Samson came to the place named Lehi, the Philistines came to meet him, shouting for joy. Then the Spirit of the Lord entered Samson and gave him great power. The ropes on him weakened like burned strings and fell off his hands! 15 Samson found the jawbone of a dead donkey, took it, and killed a thousand men with it!
16 Then Samson said,
“With a donkey’s jawbone
I made donkeys out of them.
With a donkey’s jawbone
I killed a thousand men!”
17 When he finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone. So that place was named Ramath Lehi.[a]
18 Samson was very thirsty, so he cried out to the Lord, “You gave me, your servant, this great victory. Do I have to die of thirst now? Do I have to be captured by people who are not circumcised?” 19 Then God opened up a hole in the ground at Lehi, and water came out. When Samson drank, he felt better; he felt strong again. So he named that spring Caller’s Spring, which is still in Lehi.
20 Samson judged Israel for twenty years in the days of the Philistines.
17 “The promise God made to Abraham was soon to come true, and the number of people in Egypt grew large. 18 Then a new king, who did not know who Joseph was, began to rule Egypt. 19 This king tricked our people and was cruel to our ancestors, forcing them to leave their babies outside to die. 20 At this time Moses was born, and he was very beautiful. For three months Moses was cared for in his father’s house. 21 When they put Moses outside, the king’s daughter adopted him and raised him as if he were her own son. 22 The Egyptians taught Moses everything they knew, and he was a powerful man in what he said and did.
23 “When Moses was about forty years old, he thought it would be good to visit his own people, the people of Israel. 24 Moses saw an Egyptian mistreating one of his people, so he defended the Israelite and punished the Egyptian by killing him. 25 Moses thought his own people would understand that God was using him to save them, but they did not. 26 The next day when Moses saw two men of Israel fighting, he tried to make peace between them. He said, ‘Men, you are brothers. Why are you hurting each other?’ 27 The man who was hurting the other pushed Moses away and said, ‘Who made you our ruler and judge? 28 Are you going to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’[a] 29 When Moses heard him say this, he left Egypt and went to live in the land of Midian where he was a stranger. While Moses lived in Midian, he had two sons.
Jesus Heals an Officer’s Son
43 Two days later, Jesus left and went to Galilee. 44 (Jesus had said before that a prophet is not respected in his own country.) 45 When Jesus arrived in Galilee, the people there welcomed him. They had seen all the things he did at the Passover Feast in Jerusalem, because they had been there, too.
46 Jesus went again to visit Cana in Galilee where he had changed the water into wine. One of the king’s important officers lived in the city of Capernaum, and his son was sick. 47 When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to Jesus and begged him to come to Capernaum and heal his son, because his son was almost dead. 48 Jesus said to him, “You people must see signs and miracles before you will believe in me.”
49 The officer said, “Sir, come before my child dies.”
50 Jesus answered, “Go. Your son will live.”
The man believed what Jesus told him and went home. 51 On the way the man’s servants came and met him and told him, “Your son is alive.”
52 The man asked, “What time did my son begin to get well?”
They answered, “Yesterday at one o’clock the fever left him.”
53 The father knew that one o’clock was the exact time that Jesus had said, “Your son will live.” So the man and all the people who lived in his house believed in Jesus.
54 That was the second miracle Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee.
The Holy Bible, New Century Version®. Copyright © 2005 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.