Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)

This is a song that David wrote.

A prayer for help in trouble^[a]

Daniel prays for the people

9 This is what happened in the first year that Darius ruled Babylonia. He was the son of Xerxes, a descendant of the Medes.^[a] He became the king of Babylonia. ² In the first year that Darius was king, I, Daniel, was reading God's book. I read the message that the Lord had given to his prophet, Jeremiah. He told Jeremiah that Jerusalem would continue to be a heap of stones for 70 years.^[b]

³ So I turned to my Lord God, to ask him for help. I prayed to him and I ate no food. I wore clothes of rough sackcloth. I put ashes on myself to show that I was upset. ⁴ I prayed to the Lord my God. I agreed that we were guilty and I prayed this prayer:

‘Our Lord, you are a great God and we give you honour. In your covenant, you have promised to love your people. You continue to be faithful to those people who love you and obey your commands. ⁵ We have done bad things that are wicked and evil. We have turned against you. We have not obeyed your laws and your teaching. ⁶ We did not listen to your servants, the prophets. They spoke your message to our kings, to our rulers and to our ancestors. They spoke to all the people of our nation.

⁷ Our Lord, you always do what is right. Today we are very ashamed. The people of Judah, Jerusalem and all Israel have not been faithful to you. You have sent our people away to many countries. Some are near and some are far away. We are all ashamed because we have turned away from you. ⁸ Our kings, our leaders and our ancestors have turned away from you, Lord. So we are very ashamed. ⁹ Our Lord God, we have turned against you. But you are kind and you forgive people. ¹⁰ We have not obeyed the Lord our God. You sent your servants, the prophets, to give us your laws. But we have not lived in the way that your laws taught us.

¹¹ All the people of Israel have turned away from your laws. We have refused to obey you. Your servant Moses gave us your laws. He warned us about your punishments. Now you have punished us in the way that he said. We have turned away from you. ¹² So you have done what you promised to do to us and to our rulers. You have caused us to have terrible trouble. You have punished Jerusalem with more trouble than has ever happened to any other city. ¹³ All this trouble has come to us in the way that Moses wrote in the book of your laws. But we have still not tried to please you, the Lord our God. We have not turned away from our sins. We have not learned your true teaching. ¹⁴ So you were ready to punish us with this trouble. You are always right in everything that you do. You are right to punish us because we have not obeyed you.

³ We also want you to share this new life with us. We share this life with God the Father and Jesus Christ his Son. That is why we are telling you about everything that we have seen and heard. ⁴ We are writing to you so that together we all may be completely happy.

God is light

⁵ We are telling you the good news that Jesus Christ told to us. This is the message: God is completely good and clean. He is like light. There is nothing dark about him. ⁶ Do you say that you share in the life that God gives? If you say that, but if you still live in the dark, you are telling a lie. You are not living in God's true way. ⁷ But when we live in a right way, it is like living in the light. God is always in the light. So, if we live in the light, we share together in the life which God gives. And when Jesus, the Son of God, died on the cross, he saved us from all our sins. The blood of his sacrifice makes us clean.

⁸ If we say that we never do any wrong thing, we are deceiving ourselves. Even though we may think it is true, it is a lie. ⁹ Instead, we should agree that we have done wrong things and tell that to God. Then God will forgive us for our sins. He always does what he has promised to do. He always does what is right. He will forgive us and he will make us clean again, whatever bad things we may have done. ¹⁰ God says that all people have done wrong things. So, if we say that we have not done any wrong thing, we are saying that God tells lies. It shows that we have not accepted his message at all.