Psalms 43; Psalms 44; Psalms 45; Acts 27:27-44

Psalms 43

1 O God, declare me innocent, and defend my cause against the ungodly; deliver me from lying and evil people!

2 You are my protector; why have you abandoned me? Why must I go on suffering from the cruelty of my enemies?

3 Send your light and your truth; may they lead me and bring me back to Zion, your sacred hill, and to your Temple, where you live.

4 Then I will go to your altar, O God; you are the source of my happiness. I will play my harp and sing praise to you, O God, my God.

5 Why am I so sad? Why am I so troubled? I will put my hope in God, and once again I will praise him, my savior and my God.

Psalms 44

1 With our own ears we have heard it, O God - our ancestors have told us about it, about the great things you did in their time, in the days of long ago:

2 how you yourself drove out the heathen and established your people in their land; how you punished the other nations and caused your own to prosper.

3 Your people did not conquer the land with their swords; they did not win it by their own power; it was by your power and your strength, by the assurance of your presence, which showed that you loved them.

4 You are my king and my God; you give victory to your people,

5 and by your power we defeat our enemies.

6 I do not trust in my bow or in my sword to save me;

7 but you have saved us from our enemies and defeated those who hate us.

8 We will always praise you and give thanks to you forever.

9 But now you have rejected us and let us be defeated; you no longer march out with our armies.

10 You made us run from our enemies, and they took for themselves what was ours.

11 You allowed us to be slaughtered like sheep; you scattered us in foreign countries.

12 You sold your own people for a small price as though they had little value.

13 Our neighbors see what you did to us, and they mock us and laugh at us.

14 You have made us a joke among the nations; they shake their heads at us in scorn.

15 I am always in disgrace; I am covered with shame

16 from hearing the sneers and insults of my enemies and those who hate me.

17 All this has happened to us, even though we have not forgotten you or broken the covenant you made with us.

18 We have not been disloyal to you; we have not disobeyed your commands.

19 Yet you left us helpless among wild animals; you abandoned us in deepest darkness.

20 If we had stopped worshiping our God and prayed to a foreign god,

21 you would surely have discovered it, because you know our secret thoughts.

22 But it is on your account that we are being killed all the time, that we are treated like sheep to be slaughtered.

23 Wake up, Lord! Why are you asleep? Rouse yourself! Don't reject us forever!

24 Why are you hiding from us? Don't forget our suffering and trouble!

25 We fall crushed to the ground; we lie defeated in the dust.

26 Come to our aid! Because of your constant love save us!

Psalms 45

1 Beautiful words fill my mind, as I compose this song for the king. Like the pen of a good writer my tongue is ready with a poem.

2 You are the most handsome of men; you are an eloquent speaker. God has always blessed you.

3 Buckle on your sword, mighty king; you are glorious and majestic.

4 Ride on in majesty to victory for the defense of truth and justice! Your strength will win you great victories!

5 Your arrows are sharp, they pierce the hearts of your enemies; nations fall down at your feet.

6 The kingdom that God has given you will last forever and ever. You rule over your people with justice;

7 you love what is right and hate what is evil. That is why God, your God, has chosen you and has poured out more happiness on you than on any other king.

8 The perfume of myrrh and aloes is on your clothes; musicians entertain you in palaces decorated with ivory.

9 Among the women of your court are daughters of kings, and at the right of your throne stands the queen, wearing ornaments of finest gold.

10 Bride of the king, listen to what I say - forget your people and your relatives.

11 Your beauty will make the king desire you; he is your master, so you must obey him.

12 The people of Tyre will bring you gifts; rich people will try to win your favor.

13 The princess is in the palace - how beautiful she is! Her gown is made of gold thread.

14 In her colorful gown she is led to the king, followed by her bridesmaids, and they also are brought to him.

15 With joy and gladness they come and enter the king's palace.

16 You, my king, will have many sons to succeed your ancestors as kings, and you will make them rulers over the whole earth.

17 My song will keep your fame alive forever, and everyone will praise you for all time to come.

Acts 27:27-44

27 It was the fourteenth night, and we were being driven in the Mediterranean by the storm. About midnight the sailors suspected that we were getting close to land.

28 So they dropped a line with a weight tied to it and found that the water was one hundred and twenty feet deep; a little later they did the same and found that it was ninety feet deep.

29 They were afraid that the ship would go on the rocks, so they lowered four anchors from the back of the ship and prayed for daylight.

30 Then the sailors tried to escape from the ship; they lowered the boat into the water and pretended that they were going to put out some anchors from the front of the ship.

31 But Paul said to the army officer and soldiers, "If the sailors don't stay on board, you have no hope of being saved."

32 So the soldiers cut the ropes that held the boat and let it go.

33 Just before dawn, Paul begged them all to eat some food: "You have been waiting for fourteen days now, and all this time you have not eaten a thing.

34 I beg you, then, eat some food; you need it in order to survive. Not even a hair of your heads will be lost."

35 After saying this, Paul took some bread, gave thanks to God before them all, broke it, and began to eat.

36 They took courage, and every one of them also ate some food.

37 There was a total of 276 of us on board.

38 After everyone had eaten enough, they lightened the ship by throwing all the wheat into the sea.

39 When day came, the sailors did not recognize the coast, but they noticed a bay with a beach and decided that, if possible, they would run the ship aground there.

40 So they cut off the anchors and let them sink in the sea, and at the same time they untied the ropes that held the steering oars. Then they raised the sail at the front of the ship so that the wind would blow the ship forward, and we headed for shore.

41 But the ship hit a sandbank and went aground; the front part of the ship got stuck and could not move, while the back part was being broken to pieces by the violence of the waves.

42 The soldiers made a plan to kill all the prisoners, in order to keep them from swimming ashore and escaping.

43 But the army officer wanted to save Paul, so he stopped them from doing this. Instead, he ordered everyone who could swim to jump overboard first and swim ashore;

44 the rest were to follow, holding on to the planks or to some broken pieces of the ship. And this was how we all got safely ashore.