Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
A Prayer for the Nation
For the director of music. A psalm of the sons of Korah.
85 Lord, you have been kind to your land;
you brought back the people of Jacob.
2 You forgave the guilt of the people
and covered all their sins. Selah
3 You stopped all your anger;
you turned back from your strong anger.
4 God our Savior, bring us back again.
Stop being angry with us.
5 Will you be angry with us forever?
Will you stay angry from now on?
6 Won’t you give us life again?
Your people would rejoice in you.
7 Lord, show us your love,
and save us.
8 I will listen to God the Lord.
He has ordered peace for those who worship him.
Don’t let them go back to foolishness.
9 God will soon save those who respect him,
and his glory will be seen in our land.
10 Love and truth belong to God’s people;
goodness and peace will be theirs.
11 On earth people will be loyal to God,
and God’s goodness will shine down from heaven.
12 The Lord will give his goodness,
and the land will give its crops.
13 Goodness will go before God
and prepare the way for him.
11 The people of Judah and Israel will join together again and will choose one leader for themselves. They will come up from the land, because the day of Jezreel[a] will be truly great.
2 “You are to call your brothers, ‘my people,’ and your sisters, ‘you have been shown pity.’
God Speaks About Israel
2 “Plead with your mother.[b]
Accuse her, because she is no longer my wife,
and I am no longer her husband.
Tell her to stop acting like a prostitute,
to stop behaving like an unfaithful wife.
3 If she refuses, I will strip her naked
and leave her bare like the day she was born.
I will make her dry like a desert,
like a land without water,
and I will kill her with thirst.
4 I will not take pity on her children,
because they are the children of a prostitute.
5 Their mother has acted like a prostitute;
the one who became pregnant with them has acted disgracefully.
She said, ‘I will chase after my lovers,[c]
who give me my food and water,
wool and flax, wine and olive oil.’
6 So I will block her road with thornbushes;
I will build a wall around her
so she cannot find her way.
7 She will run after her lovers,
but she won’t catch them.
She will look for them,
but she won’t find them.
Then she will say, ‘I will go back to my first husband,[d]
because life was better then for me than it is now.’
8 But she does not know that I was the one
who gave her grain, new wine, and oil.
I gave her much silver and gold,
but she used it for Baal.
9 “So I will come back and take away my grain at harvest time
and my new wine when it is ready.
I will take back my wool and linen
that covered her nakedness.
10 So I will show her nakedness to her lovers,
and no one will save her from me.
11 I will put an end to all her celebrations:
her yearly festivals, her New Moon festivals, and her Sabbaths.
I will stop all of her special feasts.
12 I will destroy her vines and fig trees,
which she said were her pay from her lovers.
I will turn them into a forest,
and wild animals will eat them.
13 I will punish her for all the times
she burned incense to the Baals.
She put on her rings and jewelry
and went chasing after her lovers,
but she forgot me!”
says the Lord.
14 “So I am going to attract her;
I will lead her into the desert
and speak tenderly to her.
15 There I will give her back her vineyards,
and I will make the Valley of Trouble a door of hope.
There she will respond as when she was young,
as when she came out of Egypt.”
Jesus Calms a Storm
22 One day Jesus and his followers got into a boat, and he said to them, “Let’s go across the lake.” And so they started across. 23 While they were sailing, Jesus fell asleep. A very strong wind blew up on the lake, causing the boat to fill with water, and they were in danger.
24 The followers went to Jesus and woke him, saying, “Master! Master! We will drown!”
Jesus got up and gave a command to the wind and the waves. They stopped, and it became calm. 25 Jesus said to his followers, “Where is your faith?”
The followers were afraid and amazed and said to each other, “Who is this that commands even the wind and the water, and they obey him?”
The Holy Bible, New Century Version®. Copyright © 2005 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.