Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
67 O God, in mercy bless us; let your face beam with joy as you look down at us.
2 Send us around the world with the news of your saving power and your eternal plan for all mankind. 3 How everyone throughout the earth will praise the Lord! 4 How glad the nations will be, singing for joy because you are their King[a] and will give true justice to their people! 5 Praise God, O world! May all the peoples of the earth give thanks to you. 6-7 For the earth has yielded abundant harvests. God, even our own God, will bless us. And peoples from remotest lands will worship him.
15 O Lord, look down from heaven and see us from your holy, glorious home; where is the love for us you used to show—your power, your mercy, and your compassion? Where are they now? 16 Surely you are still our Father! Even if Abraham and Jacob would disown us, still you would be our Father, our Redeemer from ages past. 17 O Lord, why have you hardened our hearts and made us sin and turn against you? Return and help us, for we who belong to you need you so.[a] 18 How briefly we possessed Jerusalem! And now our enemies have destroyed her. 19 O God, why do you treat us as though we weren’t your people, as though we were a heathen nation that never called you “Lord”?
19 Yet only a few days later, some Jews arrived from Antioch and Iconium and turned the crowds into a murderous mob that stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, apparently dead. 20 But as the believers stood around him, he got up and went back into the city!
The next day he left with Barnabas for Derbe. 21 After preaching the Good News there and making many disciples, they returned again to Lystra, Iconium and Antioch, 22 where they helped the believers to grow in love for God and each other. They encouraged them to continue in the faith in spite of all the persecution, reminding them that they must enter into the Kingdom of God through many tribulations. 23 Paul and Barnabas also appointed elders in every church and prayed for them with fasting, turning them over to the care of the Lord in whom they trusted.
24 Then they traveled back through Pisidia to Pamphylia, 25 preached again in Perga, and went on to Attalia.
26 Finally they returned by ship to Antioch, where their journey had begun and where they had been committed to God for the work now completed.
27 Upon arrival they called together the believers and reported on their trip, telling how God had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles too. 28 And they stayed there with the believers at Antioch for a long while.
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.