Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
A song of David.
29 Praise the Lord, you heavenly angels[a]!
Praise the Lord’s glory and power.
2 Praise the Lord and honor his name!
Worship the Lord in all his holy beauty.
3 The Lord’s voice can be heard over the sea.
The voice of our glorious Lord God is like thunder over the great ocean.
4 The Lord’s voice is powerful.
It shows the Lord’s glory.
5 The Lord’s voice shatters great cedar trees.
The Lord breaks the great cedars of Lebanon.
6 He makes Lebanon shake like a young calf dancing.
Sirion[b] trembles like a young bull jumping up and down.
7 The Lord’s voice cuts the air with flashes of lightning.
8 The Lord’s voice shakes the desert.
The desert of Kadesh[c] trembles at the Lord’s voice.
9 The Lord’s voice frightens the deer.[d]
He destroys the forests.
In his temple everyone shouts, “Glory to God!”
10 The Lord ruled as king at the time of the flood,
and the Lord will rule as king forever.
11 May the Lord make his people strong.
May the Lord bless his people with peace.
13 “An ostrich gets excited and flaps its wings, but it cannot fly.
Its wings and feathers are not like the wings of a stork.
14 An ostrich lays her eggs on the ground
and lets the sand keep them warm.
15 The ostrich forgets that someone might step on her eggs
or that a wild animal might break them.
16 An ostrich leaves her little babies.
She treats them as if they were not her own.
If her babies die, she does not care that all her work was for nothing.
17 That’s because I did not give wisdom to the ostrich.
She is foolish, and I made her that way.
18 But when the ostrich gets up to run, she laughs at the horse and its rider,
because she can run faster than any horse.
19 “Did you give the horse its strength?
Did you put the mane[a] on its neck?
20 Did you make it able to jump like a locust
or snort[b] so loudly that it scares people?
21 A horse is happy to be so strong.
It scratches the ground with its foot and runs into battle.
22 It laughs at fear; nothing makes it afraid!
It does not run away from battle.
23 The soldier’s quiver shakes on the horse’s side.
The spear and weapons its rider carries shine in the sun.
24 The horse gets very excited and races over the ground.[c]
When it hears the trumpet blow, it cannot stand still.
25 When the trumpet sounds, it snorts, ‘Hurray!’
It can smell the battle from far away
and hear the shouts of commanders with all the other sounds of battle.
4 There are different kinds of spiritual gifts, but they are all from the same Spirit. 5 There are different ways to serve, but we serve the same Lord. 6 And there are different ways that God works in people, but it is the same God who works in all of us to do everything.
7 Something from the Spirit can be seen in each person. The Spirit gives this to each one to help others. 8 The Spirit gives one person the ability to speak with wisdom. And the same Spirit gives another person the ability to speak with knowledge. 9 The same Spirit gives faith to one person and to another he gives gifts of healing. 10 The Spirit gives to one person the power to do miracles, to another the ability to prophesy, and to another the ability to judge what is from the Spirit and what is not. The Spirit gives one person the ability to speak in different kinds of languages, and to another the ability to interpret those languages. 11 One Spirit, the same Spirit, does all these things. The Spirit decides what to give each one.
The Body of Christ
12 A person has only one body, but it has many parts. Yes, there are many parts, but all those parts are still just one body. Christ is like that too. 13 Some of us are Jews and some of us are not; some of us are slaves and some of us are free. But we were all baptized to become one body through one Spirit. And we were all given[a] the one Spirit.
Copyright © 2006 by Bible League International