Daily Readings - 04/07/2026

^84:1 How I love your palace, Yahweh Sabaoth! How my soul yearns and pines for Yahweh’s courts!

^84:2 My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.

^84:3 The sparrow has found its home at last, the swallow a nest for its young, your altars, Yahweh Sabaoth, my king and my God.

^84:4 Happy those who live in your house and can praise you all day long;

^84:5 and happy the pilgrims inspired by you with courage to make the Ascents! (pause)

^84:6 As they go through the Valley of the Weeper,[*a] they make it a place of springs, clothed in blessings by early rains.

^84:7 Thence they make their way from height to height, soon to be seen before God on Zion.

^84:8 Yahweh Sabaoth, hear my prayer, listen, God of Jacob;

^84:9 God our shield, now look on us and be kind to your anointed. (pause)

^84:10 A single day in your courts is worth more than a thousand elsewhere; merely to stand on the steps of God’s[*b] house is better than living with the wicked.

^84:11 For God is battlement and shield, conferring grace and glory; Yahweh withholds nothing good from those who walk without blame.

^84:12 Yahweh Sabaoth, happy the man who puts his trust in you!

^9:14 Then John’s[*e] disciples came to him and said, ‘Why is it that we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not?’

^9:15 Jesus replied, ‘Surely the bridegroom’s attendants would never think of mourning as long as the bridegroom is still with them? But the time will come for the bridegroom to be taken away from them, and then they will fast.

^9:16 No one puts a piece of unshrunken cloth on to an old cloak, because the patch pulls away from the cloak and the tear gets worse.

^9:17 Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; if they do, the skins burst, the wine runs out, and the skins are lost. No; they put new wine into fresh skins and both are preserved.'[*f]

^144:1 Blessed be Yahweh, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle,

^144:2 my love, my bastion, my citadel, my saviour, I shelter behind him, my shield, he makes the nations submit to me.

^144:3 Yahweh, what is man, that you should notice him? A human being, that you should think about him?

^144:4 Man’s life, a mere puff of wind, his days, as fugitive as shadows.

^144:5 Yahweh, lower your heavens, come down to us! Touch the mountains, make them smoke,

^144:6 flash your lightning – scatter them, shoot your arrows – rout them.

^144:7 Reach down your hand from above, save me, rescue me from deep waters, from the power of aliens

^144:8 who tell nothing but lies, who are prepared to swear to falsehood!

^144:9 God, I have made a new song for you to be played on the ten-string lyre,

^144:10 you who give victory to kings and safety to your servant David. From peril of sword

^144:11 save me, rescue me from the power of aliens who tell nothing but lies, who are prepared to swear to falsehood!

^144:12 May our sons be like plants growing strong from their earliest days, our daughters like corner-statues,[*a] carvings fit for a palace;

^144:13 may our barns overflow with every possible crop, may the sheep in our fields be counted in their thousands and tens of thousands,

^144:14 may our cattle be stout and strong; and may there be an end of raids and exile, and of panic in our streets.

^144:15 Happy the nation of whom this is true, happy the nation whose God is Yahweh!

^8:9 Your interests, however, are not in the unspiritual, but in the spiritual, since the Spirit of God has made his home in you. In fact, unless you possessed the Spirit of Christ you would not belong to him.

^8:11 and if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, then he who raised Jesus from the dead will give life to your own mortal bodies through his Spirit living in you.

^8:12 So then, my brothers, there is no necessity for us to obey our unspiritual selves or to live unspiritual lives.

^8:13 If you do live in that way, you are doomed to die; but if by the Spirit you put an end to the misdeeds of the body you will live.

^11:25 At that time Jesus exclaimed, ‘I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and of earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children.

^11:26 Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased you to do.

^11:27 Everything has been entrusted to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, just as no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

^11:28 ‘Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest.

^11:29 Shoulder my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.[*f]

^11:30 Yes, my yoke is easy and my burden light.’