Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
Psalm 145[a]
A song of praise by David.
1 I will lift my praise above everything to You, my God and King!
I will continually bless Your name forever and always.
2 My praise will never cease—
I will praise You every day;
I will lift up Your name forever.
3 The Eternal is great and deserves endless praise;
His greatness knows no limit, recognizes no boundary.
No one can measure or comprehend His magnificence.
4 One generation after another will celebrate Your great works;
they will pass on the story of Your powerful acts to their children.
5 Your majesty and glorious splendor have captivated me;
I will meditate on Your wonders, sing songs of Your worth.
6 We confess—there is nothing greater than You, God, nothing mightier than Your awesome works.
I will tell of Your greatness as long as I have breath.
7 The news of Your rich goodness is no secret—
Your people love to recall it
and sing songs of joy to celebrate Your righteousness.
8 The Eternal is gracious.
He shows mercy to His people.
For Him anger does not come easily, but faithful love does—and it is rich and abundant.
3 Here comes your attacker’s best warriors with gleaming red shields;
the soldiers are in scarlet armor.
Chariots gleam and flash like fire with their approach.
They were carefully made ready for battle.
They taunt you by waving strong spears before you.[a]
4 See the chariots race each other up and down your streets,
rushing back and forth through the city.
They look like flaming torches.
They dart like lightning bolts.
5 Your king remembers his specially-trained forces,
but they can’t get it together, stumbling as they march.
They run to protect the city wall
and try to shield it from the attackers. Their resistance fails.
Nineveh has hundreds of towers along her walls, some up to 200 feet in height, but before the judgment of God they will dissolve.
6 The city gates at the rivers are thrown wide open,
and the palace collapses in the resulting flood.
7 A decree is set and goes out: Nineveh will be ransacked.
She is stripped and will be carried far away from home.
You can hear the young girls pounding their breaking hearts
and moaning like terrified doves.
8 Nineveh was a shimmering pool of water, full to the brim in the days of her glory,
but look, her soldiers are draining away.
“Stop! Stop!” the Assyrian commanders shout,
but no one turns back. The destruction continues.
9 The attacker commands, “Take all the silver;
take all the gold!
The supply is endless.
After all, their treasury is full of stolen wealth.”
10 Every corner of the city is turned upside down, ransacked, stripped bare.
She will lose all hope; her knees give way;
she will shake with fear and turn white as a sheet.
11 Where now is Nineveh’s famous and deadly lion’s den?
The place where they nourish their young lions into killing machines?
The place where the lion and the lioness go, along with their cubs, to feed on victims?
The place where they had nothing to fear?
12 The lion always kills enough for his cubs
and strangles the prey for his mate,
Filling up the lair with the blood and bones and flesh of its kill
and his dens with the fallen prey.
13 Eternal One: I stand against you, Nineveh!
I will command My heavenly army to burn up your chariots till the smoke rises up
And to consume your young lions with the sword.
I will leave nothing in the land to sustain you.
The voice of your messengers will never again be heard.
Weakness looks like failure in the eyes of the world, but for Paul weakness is an avenue to share in Jesus’ death and, therefore, in His life as well. The challenge is to remain faithful even in the difficult times, even when there is no one left to provide support. It is in these times that God’s power and comfort are most evident. This call to embrace weakness and suffering is difficult. It is normal to run from pain. But the examples of Jesus in the Gospels, of Paul in his letters, and of David in the psalms are of finding God’s strength in times of weakness.
5 Examine yourselves. Check your faith! Are you really in the faith? Do you still not know that Jesus the Anointed is in you?—unless, of course, you have failed the test. 6 Surely you will realize we have not failed the test, 7 but we pray to God that you will stay away from evil. What’s important is not whether we appear to have passed the test, but that you do what is right and act honorably, even if it appears that we have failed. 8 For there’s nothing we can do to oppose the truth; all we can do is align ourselves with it. 9 You see, we celebrate when we are weak but you are strong. Our prayer is simple: that you may be whole and complete. 10 How I hope I am saving you by writing this to you in advance; this letter will spare me from using the Lord’s authority to come down on you when I arrive. His intention in giving me this authority is to build you up, not tear you down.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.