Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
Psalm 121[a]
God, Guardian of His People
1 A song of ascents.
I lift up my eyes to the mountains;[b]
from where will I receive help?
2 My help comes from the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth.[c]
3 He will not permit your foot to stumble;
he who guards you will not fall asleep.[d]
4 Indeed, the one who guards Israel
never slumbers, never sleeps.[e]
5 [f]The Lord serves as your guardian;
he is at your right hand to serve as your shade.
6 The sun will not strike you during the day,
nor the moon during the night.
7 [g]The Lord will protect you against all evil;
he will watch over your life.
8 The Lord will watch over your coming and your going
both now and forevermore.
11 O afflicted city, storm-battered and not comforted,
I will build you with precious stones
and lay your foundations with sapphires.
12 I will use rubies to make your battlements,
jewels for your gates,
and precious stones for all your walls.
13 All of your sons will be taught by the Lord,
and great will be their prosperity.
14 With justice you will be established;
you will be free from the fear of oppression,
and no terror will afflict you.
15 Should anyone attack you,
it will not be my doing,
and anyone who does stir up strife
will fall before you.
16 It was I who created the blacksmith
to blow on the coals in the fire
and produce a weapon suitable for its purpose.
I also created the ravager
to destroy and wreak havoc.
17 No weapon used against you will prevail,
and you will refute every accusation
that is raised in court against you.
This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord,
their vindication from me, says the Lord.
22 Paul’s Speech at the Areopagus.[a]Then Paul stood before them in the Areopagus and said: “Men of Athens, I have seen how religious you are. 23 For as I walked around, looking carefully at your shrines, I noticed among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an Unknown God.’ What, therefore, you worship as unknown, I now proclaim to you.
24 “The God who made the world and everything in it, the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in shrines made by human hands. 25 Nor is he served by human hands as though he were in need of anything. Rather, it is he who gives to everyone life and breath and all other things. 26 From one ancestor,[b] he created all peoples to occupy the entire earth, and he decreed their appointed times and the boundaries of where they would live.
27 “He did all this so that people might seek God in the hope that by groping for him they might find him, even though indeed he is not far from any one of us. 28 For ‘In him we live and move and have our being.’[c] As even your own poets have said, ‘We are all his offspring.’
29 “Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like an image of gold or silver or stone, fashioned by human art and imagination. 30 God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, but now he commands people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world with justice by a man whom he has appointed. He has given public confirmation of this to all by raising him from the dead.”
32 When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some scoffed, but others said, “We should like to hear you speak further on this subject at another time.” 33 After that, Paul left them. 34 However, some of them joined him and became believers, including Dionysius[d] the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, as well as some others.
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