Daily Readings - 27/06/2026

^2:2 The Lord has pitilessly destroyed all the homes of Jacob; in his displeasure he has shattered the strongholds of the daughter of Judah; he has thrown to the ground, he has left accursed the kingdom and its rulers.

^2:10 Mutely they sit on the ground, the elders of the daughter of Zion; they have put dust on their heads, and wrapped themselves in sackcloth. The virgins of Jerusalem hang their heads down to the ground.

^2:11 My eyes wasted away with weeping, my entrails shuddered, my liver spilled on the ground at the ruin of the daughters of my people, as children, mere infants, fainted in the squares of the Citadel.

^2:12 They kept saying to their mothers, ‘Where is the bread?’ as they fainted like wounded men in the squares of the City, as they poured out their souls on their mothers’ breasts.

^2:13 How can I describe you, to what compare you, daughter of Jerusalem? Who can rescue and comfort you, virgin daughter of Zion? For huge as the sea is your affliction; who can possibly cure you?

^2:14 The visions your prophets had on your behalf were delusive, tinsel things, they never pointed out your sin, to ward off your exile. The visions they proffered you were false, fallacious, misleading.

^2:18 Cry aloud, then, to the Lord, groan, daughter of Zion; let your tears flow like a torrent, day and night; give yourself no relief, grant your eyes no rest.

^2:19 Up, cry out in the night-time, in the early hours of darkness; pour your heart out like water before Yahweh. Stretch out your hands to him for the lives of your children.

^73:1 God is indeed good to Israel, the Lord is good to pure hearts.

^73:2 My feet were on the point of stumbling, a little further and I should have slipped,

^73:3 envying the arrogant as I did, and watching the wicked get rich.

^73:4 For them, no such thing as pain, their bodies are healthy and strong,

^73:5 they do not suffer as other men do, no human afflictions for them!

^73:6 So pride is their chain of honour, violence the garment that covers them;

^73:7 their spite oozes like fat, their hearts drip with slyness

^73:8 Cynical advocates of evil, lofty advocates of force,

^73:9 they think their mouth is heaven and their tongue can dictate on earth.

^73:10 This is why my people turn to them and lap up all they say, asking,

^73:11 ‘How will God find out? Does the Most High know everything?

^73:12 Look at them: these are the wicked, well-off and still getting richer!’

^73:13 After all, why should I keep my own heart pure, and wash my hands in innocence,

^73:14 if you plague me all day long and discipline me every morning?

^73:15 Had I said, ‘That talk appeals to me’, I should have betrayed your children’s race.

^73:16 Instead, I tried to analyse the problem, hard though I found it –

^73:17 until the day I pierced the mystery and saw the end in store for them:

^73:18 they are on a slippery slope, you put them there, you urge them on to ruin,

^73:19 until suddenly they fall, done for, terrified to death.

^73:20 When you wake up, Lord, you shrug them off like the phantoms of a morning dream.

^73:21 When my heart had been growing sourer with pains shooting through my loins,

^73:22 I had simply failed to understand, my stupid attitude to you was brutish.

^73:23 Even so, I stayed in your presence, you held my right hand;

^73:24 now guide me with advice and in the end receive me into glory.

^73:25 I look to no one else in heaven, I delight in nothing else on earth.

^73:26 My flesh and my heart are pining with love, my heart’s Rock, my own, God for ever!

^73:27 So then: those who abandon you are doomed, you destroy the adulterous deserter;[*a]

^73:28 whereas my joy lies in being close to God. I have taken shelter in the Lord, continually to proclaim what you have done.

^8:5 When he went into Capernaum a centurion came up and pleaded with him.

^8:6 ‘Sir,’ he said ‘my servant is lying at home paralysed, and in great pain.’

^8:7 ‘I will come myself and cure him’ said Jesus.

^8:8 The centurion replied, ‘Sir, I am not worthy to have you under my roof; just give the word and my servant will be cured.

^8:9 For I am under authority myself, and have soldiers under me; and I say to one man: Go, and he goes; to another: Come here, and he comes; to my servant: Do this, and he does it.’

^8:10 When Jesus heard this he was astonished and said to those following him, ‘I tell you solemnly, nowhere in Israel have I found faith like this.

^8:11 And I tell you that many will come from east and west to take their places with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob at the feast in the kingdom of heaven;

^8:12 but the subjects of the kingdom[*a] will be turned out into the dark, where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth.’

^8:13 And to the centurion Jesus said, ‘Go back, then; you have believed, so let this be done for you’. And the servant was cured at that moment.

^8:14 And going into Peter’s house Jesus found Peter’s mother-in-law in bed with fever.

^8:15 He touched her hand and the fever left her, and she got up and began to wait on him.

^8:16 That evening they brought him many who were possessed by devils. He cast out the spirits with a word and cured all who were sick.

^8:17 This was to fulfil the prophecy of Isaiah: He took our sicknesses away and carried our diseases for us.[*b]

^4:8 One day as Elisha was on his way to Shunem, a woman of rank who lived there pressed him to stay and eat there. After this he always broke his journey for a meal when he passed that way.

^4:9 She said to her husband, ‘Look, I am sure the man who is constantly passing our way must be a holy man of God.

^4:10 Let us build him a small room on the roof, and put him a bed in it, and a table and chair and lamp; whenever he comes to us he can rest there.’

^4:11 One day when he came, he retired to the upper room and lay down.

^4:14 ‘What can be done for her then?’ he asked. Gehazi answered, ‘Well, she has no son and her husband is old’.

^4:15 Elisha said, ‘Call her’. The servant called her and she stood at the door.

^4:16 ‘This time next year,’ he said ‘you will hold a son in your arms.’ But she said, ‘No, my lord, do not deceive your servant’.

^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.

^6:3 You have been taught that when we were baptised in Christ Jesus we were baptised in his death;

^6:4 in other words, when we were baptised we went into the tomb with him and joined him in death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glory, we too might live a new life.

^6:8 But we believe that having died with Christ we shall return to life with him:

^6:9 Christ, as we know, having been raised from the dead will never die again. Death has no power over him any more.

^6:10 When he died, he died, once for all, to sin, so his life now is life with God;

^6:11 and in that way, you too must consider yourselves to be dead to sin but alive for God in Christ Jesus.

^10:37 ‘Anyone who prefers father or mother to me is not worthy of me. Anyone who prefers son or daughter to me is not worthy of me.

^10:38 Anyone who does not take his cross and follow in my footsteps is not worthy of me.

^10:39 Anyone who finds his life will lose it; anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it.

^10:40 Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me; and those who welcome me welcome the one who sent me.

^10:41 Anyone who welcomes a prophet will have a prophet’s reward; and anyone who welcomes a holy man will have a holy man’s reward.

^10:42 ‘If anyone gives so much as a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is a disciple, then I tell you solemnly, he will most certainly not lose his reward.’