Daily Readings - 24/12/2025

^88:1 Yahweh my God, I call for help all day, I weep to you all night;

^88:2 may my prayer reach you hear my cries for help;

^88:3 for my soul is all troubled, my life is on the brink of Sheol;

^88:4 I am numbered among those who go down to the Pit, a man bereft of strength:

^88:5 a man alone, down among the dead, among the slaughtered in their graves, among those you have forgotten, those deprived of your protecting hand.

^88:6 You have plunged me to the bottom of the Pit, to its darkest, deepest place,

^88:7 weighted down by your anger, drowned beneath your waves. (pause)

^88:8 You have turned my friends against me and made me repulsive to them; in prison and unable to escape, my eyes are worn out with suffering.

^88:9 Yahweh, I invoke you all day, I stretch out my hands to you:

^88:10 are your marvels meant for the dead, can ghosts rise up to praise you?

^88:11 Who talks of your love in the grave, of your faithfulness in the place of perdition?

^88:12 Do they hear about your marvels in the dark, about your righteousness in the land of oblivion? (pause)

^88:13 But I am here, calling for your help, praying to you every morning:

^88:14 why do you reject me? Why do you hide your face from me?

^88:15 Wretched, slowly dying since my youth, I bore your terrors – now I am exhausted;

^88:16 your anger overwhelmed me, you destroyed me with your terrors

^88:17 which, like a flood, were round me, all day long, all together closing in on me.

^88:18 You have turned my friends and neighbours against me, now darkness is my one companion left.

^1:67 His father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke this prophecy:

^1:68 ‘Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel[*k] for he has visited his people, he has come to their rescue

^1:69 and he has raised up for us a power for salvation in the House of his servant David,

^1:70 even as he proclaimed, by the mouth of his holy prophets from ancient times,

^1:71 that he would save us from our enemies and from the hands of all who hate us.

^1:72 Thus he shows mercy to our ancestors, thus he remembers his holy covenant[*l]

^1:73 the oath he swore to our father Abraham

^1:74 that he would grant us, free from fear, to be delivered from the hands of our enemies,

^1:75 to serve him in holiness and virtue in his presence, all our days.

^1:76 And you, little child, you shall be called Prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare the way for him.

^1:77 To give his people knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins;

^1:78 this by the tender mercy of our God who from on high Will bring the rising Sun to visit us,

^1:79 to give light to those who live in darkness and the shadow of death[*m] and to guide our feet into the way of peace.’