Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

25 To you, O Lord, I pray. ² Don’t fail me, Lord, for I am trusting you. Don’t let my enemies succeed. Don’t give them victory over me. ³ None of those who have faith in God will ever be disgraced for trusting him. But all who harm the innocent shall be defeated.

⁴ Show me the path where I should go, O Lord; point out the right road for me to walk. ⁵ Lead me; teach me; for you are the God who gives me salvation. I have no hope except in you. ^6-7 Overlook my youthful sins, O Lord! Look at me instead through eyes of mercy and forgiveness, through eyes of everlasting love and kindness.

⁸ The Lord is good and glad to teach the proper path to all who go astray; ⁹ he will teach the ways that are right and best to those who humbly turn to him. ¹⁰ And when we obey him, every path he guides us on is fragrant with his loving-kindness and his truth.

9 It was now the first year of the reign of King Darius, the son of Ahasuerus. (Darius was a Mede but became king of the Chaldeans.) ² In that first year of his reign, I, Daniel, learned from the book of Jeremiah the prophet that Jerusalem must lie desolate for seventy years.^{[a] 3} So I earnestly pleaded with the Lord God to end our captivity and send us back to our own land.^[b]

As I prayed, I fasted and wore rough sackcloth, and I sprinkled myself with ashes ⁴ and confessed my sins and those of my people.

“O Lord,” I prayed, “you are a great and awesome God; you always fulfill your promises of mercy to those who love you and keep your laws. ⁵ But we have sinned so much; we have rebelled against you and scorned your commands. ⁶ We have refused to listen to your servants the prophets, whom you sent again and again down through the years, with your messages to our kings and princes and to all the people.

⁷ “O Lord, you are righteous; but as for us, we are always shamefaced with sin, just as you see us now; yes, all of us—the men of Judah, the people of Jerusalem, and all Israel, scattered near and far wherever you have driven us because of our disloyalty to you. ⁸ O Lord, we and our kings and princes and fathers are weighted down with shame because of all our sins.

⁹ “But the Lord our God is merciful and pardons even those who have rebelled against him.

¹⁰ “O Lord our God, we have disobeyed you; we have flouted all the laws you gave us through your servants, the prophets. ¹¹ All Israel has disobeyed; we have turned away from you and haven’t listened to your voice. And so the awesome curse of God has crushed us—the curse written in the law of Moses your servant. ¹² And you have done exactly as you warned us you would do, for never in all history has there been a disaster like what happened at Jerusalem to us and our rulers. ¹³ Every curse against us written in the law of Moses has come true; all the evils he predicted—all have come. But even so we still refuse to satisfy the Lord our God by turning from our sins and doing right.

¹⁴ “And so the Lord deliberately crushed us with the calamity he prepared; he is fair in everything he does, but we would not obey.

³ Again I say, we are telling you about what we ourselves have actually seen and heard, so that you may share the fellowship and the joys we have with the Father and with Jesus Christ his son. ⁴ And if you do as I say in this letter, then you, too, will be full of joy, and so will we.

⁵ This is the message God has given us to pass on to you: that God is Light and in him is no darkness at all. ⁶ So if we say we are his friends but go on living in spiritual darkness and sin, we are lying. ⁷ But if we are living in the light of God’s presence, just as Christ does, then we have wonderful fellowship and joy with each other, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from every sin.

⁸ If we say that we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and refusing to accept the truth. ⁹ But if we confess our sins to him,^[a] he can be depended on to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong. And it is perfectly proper for God to do this for us because Christ died to wash away our sins. ¹⁰ If we claim we have not sinned, we are lying and calling God a liar, for he says we have sinned.