Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
24 How countless are your works, Lord!
In wisdom you have made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.[a](A)
25 Here is the sea, vast and wide,
teeming with creatures beyond number—
living things both large and small.(B)
26 There the ships move about,
and Leviathan, which you formed to play there.(C)
27 All of them wait for you
to give them their food at the right time.(D)
28 When you give it to them,
they gather it;
when you open your hand,
they are satisfied with good things.(E)
29 When you hide your face,
they are terrified;
when you take away their breath,
they die and return to the dust.(F)
30 When you send your breath,[b]
they are created,(G)
and you renew the surface of the ground.(H)
31 May the glory of the Lord endure forever;
may the Lord rejoice in his works.(I)
32 He looks at the earth, and it trembles;
he touches the mountains,
and they pour out smoke.(J)
33 I will sing to the Lord all my life;
I will sing praise to my God while I live.(K)
34 May my meditation be pleasing to him;
I will rejoice in the Lord.(L)
35 May sinners vanish from the earth
and wicked people be no more.(A)
My soul, bless the Lord!
Hallelujah!
The Tower of Babylon
11 The whole earth had the same language and vocabulary. 2 As people migrated from the east,[a] they found a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there.(A) 3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make oven-fired bricks.” (They used brick for stone and asphalt(B) for mortar.) 4 And they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky.(C) Let’s make a name for ourselves; otherwise, we will be scattered throughout the earth.”
5 Then the Lord came down(D) to look over the city and the tower that the humans[b] were building. 6 The Lord said, “If they have begun to do this as one people all having the same language, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let’s go down there and confuse their language so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” 8 So from there the Lord scattered them throughout the earth,(E) and they stopped building the city. 9 Therefore it is called Babylon,[c][d](F) for there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth, and from there the Lord scattered them throughout the earth.
Unity Yet Diversity in the Body
12 For just as the body is one(A) and has many parts, and all the parts of that body, though many, are one body—so also is Christ.(B) 13 For we were all baptized by[a] one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and we were all given one Spirit to drink.(C) 14 Indeed, the body is not one part but many. 15 If the foot should say, “Because I’m not a hand, I don’t belong to the body,” it is not for that reason any less a part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I’m not an eye, I don’t belong to the body,” it is not for that reason any less a part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But as it is, God has arranged each one of the parts in the body just as he wanted.(D) 19 And if they were all the same part, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body. 21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” Or again, the head can’t say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” 22 On the contrary, those parts of the body that are weaker are indispensable. 23 And those parts of the body that we consider less honorable,(E) we clothe these with greater honor, and our unrespectable parts are treated with greater respect, 24 which our respectable parts do not need.
Instead, God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the less honorable, 25 so that there would be no division(F) in the body, but that the members would have the same concern for each other. 26 So if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.
27 Now you are the body of Christ,(G) and individual members of it.
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