Revised Common Lectionary (Semicontinuous)
85 Lord, you have poured out amazing blessings on this land! You have restored the fortunes of Israel,[a] 2 and forgiven the sins of your people—yes, covered over each one, 3 so that all your wrath, your blazing anger, is now ended.
4 Now bring us back to loving you,[b] O Lord, so that your anger will never need rise against us again. 5 (Or will you be always angry—on and on to distant generations?) 6 Oh, revive us! Then your people can rejoice in you again. 7 Pour out your love and kindness on us, Lord, and grant us your salvation.
8 I am listening carefully to all the Lord is saying—for he speaks peace to his people, his saints, if they will only stop their sinning. 9 Surely his salvation is near to those who reverence him; our land will be filled with his glory.
10 Mercy and truth have met together. Grim justice[c] and peace have kissed! 11 Truth rises from the earth, and righteousness smiles down from heaven.
12 Yes, the Lord pours down his blessings on the land, and it yields its bountiful crops. 13 Justice goes before him to make a pathway for his steps.[d]
11 Then the people of Judah and Israel will unite and have one leader; they will return from exile together; what a day that will be—the day when God will sow his people in the fertile soil of their own land again.[a]
2 “O Jezreel,[b] rename your brother and sister. Call your brother Ammi (which means ‘Now you are mine’); name your sister Ruhamah (‘Pitied’), for now God will have mercy upon her!
2 “Plead with your mother, for she has become another man’s wife—I am no longer her husband. Beg her to stop her harlotry, to quit giving herself to others. 3 If she doesn’t, I will strip her as naked as the day she was born and cause her to waste away and die of thirst as in a land riddled with famine and drought. 4 And I will not give special favors to her children as I would to my own, for they are not my children; they belong to other men.
5 “For their mother has committed adultery. She did a shameful thing when she said, ‘I’ll run after other men and sell myself to them for food and drinks and clothes.’
6 “But I will fence her in with briars and thornbushes; I’ll block the road before her to make her lose her way, so that 7 when she runs after her lovers, she will not catch up with them. She will search for them but not find them. Then she will think, ‘I might as well return to my husband, for I was better off with him than I am now.’
8 “She doesn’t realize that all she has, has come from me. It was I who gave her all the gold and silver she used in worshiping Baal, her god!
9 “But now I will take back the wine and ripened corn I constantly supplied, and the clothes I gave her to cover her nakedness—I will no longer give her rich harvests of grain in its season or wine at the time of the grape harvest. 10 Now I will expose her nakedness in public for all her lovers to see, and no one will be able to rescue her from my hand.
11 “I will put an end to all her joys, her parties, holidays, and feasts. 12 I will destroy her vineyards and her orchards—gifts she claims her lovers gave her—and let them grow into a jungle; wild animals will eat their fruit.
13 “For all the incense she burned to Baal her idol and for the times when she put on her earrings and jewels and went out looking for her lovers and deserted me—for all these things I will punish her,” says the Lord.
14 “But I will court her again and bring her into the wilderness, and I will speak to her tenderly there. 15 There I will give back her vineyards to her and transform her Valley of Troubles into a Door of Hope. She will respond to me there, singing with joy as in days long ago in her youth after I had freed her from captivity in Egypt.
22 One day about that time, as he and his disciples were out in a boat, he suggested that they cross to the other side of the lake. 23 On the way across he lay down for a nap, and while he was sleeping the wind began to rise. A fierce storm developed that threatened to swamp them, and they were in real danger.
24 They rushed over and woke him up. “Master, Master, we are sinking!” they screamed.
So he spoke to the storm: “Quiet down,” he said, and the wind and waves subsided and all was calm! 25 Then he asked them, “Where is your faith?”
And they were filled with awe and fear of him and said to one another, “Who is this man, that even the winds and waves obey him?”
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.