Daily Readings - 16/01/2026

^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.

^2:1 When he returned to Capernaum some time later, word went round that he was back;

^2:2 and so many people collected that there was no room left, even in front of the door. He was preaching the word to them

^2:3 when some people came bringing him a paralytic carried by four men,

^2:4 but as the crowd made it impossible to get the man to him, they stripped the roof over the place where Jesus was; and when they had made an opening, they lowered the stretcher on which the paralytic lay.

^2:5 Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralytic, ‘My child, your sins are forgiven’.

^2:6 Now some scribes were sitting there, and they thought to themselves,

^2:7 ‘How can this man talk like that? He is blaspheming. Who can forgive sins but God?’

^2:8 Jesus, inwardly aware that this was what they were thinking, said to them, ‘Why do you have these thoughts in your hearts?

^2:9 Which of these is easier: to say to the paralytic, “Your sins are forgiven” or to say, “Get up, pick up your stretcher and walk”?

^2:10 But to prove to you that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins,’ –

^2:11 he said to the paralytic – I order you: get up, pick up your stretcher, and go off home.’

^2:12 And the man got up, picked up his stretcher at once and walked out in front of everyone, so that they were all astounded and praised God saying, ‘We have never seen anything like this’.