Preparing for the Twenty-First
Sunday after Pentecost
Year A

Daily Readings for Friday
October 23, 2020

Prayer

Almighty God, 

your Son has shown us how to love one another. 

May our love for you 

overflow into joyous service 

and be a healing witness to our neighbors 

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17

Show your servants your works

 

Lord, you have been our dwelling place

in all generations.

Before the mountains were brought forth,

or ever you had formed the earth and the world,

from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

You turn us back to dust,

and say, “Turn back, you mortals.”

For a thousand years in your sight

are like yesterday when it is past,

or like a watch in the night.

You sweep them away; they are like a dream,

like grass that is renewed in the morning;

in the morning it flourishes and is renewed;

in the evening it fades and withers.

Turn, O Lord! How long?

Have compassion on your servants!

Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,

so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

Make us glad as many days as you have afflicted us,

and as many years as we have seen evil.

Let your work be manifest to your servants,

and your glorious power to their children.

Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us,

and prosper for us the work of our hands—

O prosper the work of our hands!

 

Deuteronomy 32:1-14, 18

The song of Moses

 

Give ear, O heavens, and I will speak;

let the earth hear the words of my mouth.

May my teaching drop like the rain,

my speech condense like the dew;

like gentle rain on grass,

like showers on new growth.

For I will proclaim the name of the Lord;

ascribe greatness to our God!

The Rock, his work is perfect,

and all his ways are just.

A faithful God, without deceit,

just and upright is he;

yet his degenerate children have dealt falsely with him,

a perverse and crooked generation.

Do you thus repay the Lord,

O foolish and senseless people?

Is not he your father, who created you,

who made you and established you?

Remember the days of old,

consider the years long past;

ask your father, and he will inform you;

your elders, and they will tell you.

When the Most High apportioned the nations,

when he divided humankind,

he fixed the boundaries of the peoples

according to the number of the gods;

the Lord’s own portion was his people,

Jacob his allotted share.

He sustained him in a desert land,

in a howling wilderness waste;

he shielded him, cared for him,

guarded him as the apple of his eye.

As an eagle stirs up its nest,

and hovers over its young;

as it spreads its wings, takes them up,

and bears them aloft on its pinions,

the Lord alone guided him;

no foreign god was with him.

He set him atop the heights of the land,

and fed him with produce of the field;

he nursed him with honey from the crags,

with oil from flinty rock;

curds from the herd, and milk from the flock,

with fat of lambs and rams;

Bashan bulls and goats,

together with the choicest wheat—

you drank fine wine from the blood of grapes.

 

Titus 2:7-8, 11-15

A life devoted to good works

 

Show yourself in all respects a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, gravity, and sound speech that cannot be censured; then any opponent will be put to shame, having nothing evil to say of us.

 

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.

 

Declare these things; exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one look down on you.

 

 

Prayer

Holy One, 

you planted us by living water, 

that we might be rooted in righteousness. 

You call us to be holy as you are holy. 

Assured of your love, 

help us to cast aside all fear, 

that we may love our neighbors as ourselves. Amen.

 

Psalm 1

Their delight is in the law

 

Happy are those

who do not follow the advice of the wicked,

or take the path that sinners tread,

or sit in the seat of scoffers;

but their delight is in the law of the Lord,

and on his law they meditate day and night.

They are like trees

planted by streams of water,

which yield their fruit in its season,

and their leaves do not wither.

In all that they do, they prosper.

The wicked are not so,

but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,

nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;

for the Lord watches over the way of the righteous,

but the way of the wicked will perish.

 

Deuteronomy 9:25—10:5

The second set of commandments

 

Throughout the forty days and forty nights that I lay prostrate before the Lord when the Lord intended to destroy you, I prayed to the Lord and said, “Lord God, do not destroy the people who are your very own possession, whom you redeemed in your greatness, whom you brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand. Remember your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; pay no attention to the stubbornness of this people, their wickedness and their sin, otherwise the land from which you have brought us might say, ‘Because the Lord was not able to bring them into the land that he promised them, and because he hated them, he has brought them out to let them die in the wilderness.’ For they are the people of your very own possession, whom you brought out by your great power and by your outstretched arm.”

 

At that time the Lord said to me, “Carve out two tablets of stone like the former ones, and come up to me on the mountain, and make an ark of wood. I will write on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets, which you smashed, and you shall put them in the ark.” So I made an ark of acacia wood, cut two tablets of stone like the former ones, and went up the mountain with the two tablets in my hand. Then he wrote on the tablets the same words as before, the ten commandments that the Lord had spoken to you on the mountain out of the fire on the day of the assembly; and the Lord gave them to me. So I turned and came down from the mountain, and put the tablets in the ark that I had made; and there they are, as the Lord commanded me.

 

Titus 2:7-8, 11-15

A life devoted to good works

 

Show yourself in all respects a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, gravity, and sound speech that cannot be censured; then any opponent will be put to shame, having nothing evil to say of us.

 

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.

 

Declare these things; exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one look down on you.

 

 

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Prayer reprinted from Revised Common Lectionary Prayers, © 2002 Consultation on Common Texts. Reproduced by permission.

Revised Common Lectionary Daily Readings copyright © 2005 Consultation on Common Texts admin. Augsburg Fortress. Reproduced by permission. No further reproduction allowed without the written permission of Augsburg Fortress.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.


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