Mon. morning Aug. 3
Opening response
O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth will declare your praise.
Prayer of thanksgiving
Blessed are you, Sovereign God, creator of all, to you be glory and praise forever. You founded the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands. In the fullness of time, you made us in your image, and in these last days you have spoken to us in your Son Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh. As we rejoice in the gift of your presence among us, let the light of your love always shine in our hearts, your Spirit ever renew our lives, and your praises ever be on our lips.
Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Blessed be God forever.
The night has passed, and the day lies open before us; let us pray with one heart and mind.
Silence is kept.
As we rejoice in the gift of this new day, so may the light of your presence, O God, set our hearts on fire with love for you; now and forever.
Amen.
Hymn
Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee
Confession of Sin
Seek the LORD while He may be found,
call upon Him while He is near.
Let the wicked forsake his way,
and the unrighteous man his thoughts;
and let him return to the LORD, and He will have mercy upon him,
and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.
cf Isaiah 55
A time of silence and self-examination may be kept.
Lord God, I have sinned against you; I have done what is evil in your sight. I am sorry and repent. Have mercy on me according to your lovingkindness. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. Renew a right spirit within me, and restore unto me the joy of your salvation, through Jesus Christ my Lord. Amen.
cf Psalm 51
May the Father of all mercies cleanse us from our sins, and restore us in his image to the praise and glory of his name, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
Blessed be the LORD,
because He has heard the voice of my supplications.
Therefore my heart rejoices,
and with my song I will thank Him.
cf Psalm 28:7,9
Psalm 44
𝙍: Arise, O God, and be our help.
We have heard with our ears, O God;
our fathers have told us
what deeds You performed in their days,
in the days of old:
You drove out the nations with Your hand,
but them You planted;
You afflicted the peoples,
but them You set free.
For they did not take possession of the land by their own sword,
nor did their own arm save them;
but it was Your right hand, and Your arm,
and the light of Your countenance, because You favored them.
𝙍: Arise, O God, and be our help.
You are my King, O God;
command victories for Jacob.
Through You we will push down our enemies;
through Your name we will trample those who rise up against us.
For I will not trust in my bow,
nor can my sword save me.
But You have saved us from our enemies,
and have put to shame those who hate us.
In God we have boasted continually,
and we will give thanks to Your name forever.
𝙍: Arise, O God, and be our help.
But You have rejected us and put us to shame,
and you do not go out with our armies.
You make us turn back from the enemy,
and those who hate us have taken spoil for themselves.
You have given us up like sheep for slaughter,
and have scattered us among the nations.
You sell Your people for a low price,
and do not increase Your wealth by their sale.
You make us a reproach to our neighbors,
a scorn and a derision to those around us.
You make us a byword among the nations,
a shaking of the head among the peoples.
𝙍: Arise, O God, and be our help.
My disgrace is continually before me,
and shame has covered my face
at the voice of him who reproaches and reviles,
at the presence of the enemy and avenger.
All this has come upon us;
yet we have not forgotten You,
nor have we dealt falsely with Your covenant.
Our heart has not turned back,
nor have our steps departed from Your way;
Yet You have broken us in the place of jackals
and covered us with the shadow of death.
If we had forgotten the name of our God
or stretched out our hands to a foreign god,
would not God search this out?
For He knows the secrets of the heart.
Yet for Your sake we are killed all day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.
𝙍: Arise, O God, and be our help.
Awake! Why do You sleep, O Lord?
Arise! Do not cast us off forever!
Why do You hide Your face?
Why do you forget our affliction and our oppression?
For our soul is bowed down to the dust;
our body clings to the ground.
Arise, be our help.
Redeem us for the sake of Your lovingkindness!
Glory to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit;
as it was in the beginning, is now,
and will be forever. Amen.
𝙍: Arise, O God, and be our help.
Psalm prayer
In the darkness of unknowing, when your love seems absent, draw near to us, O God, in Christ forsaken, in Christ risen, our Redeemer and our Lord.
Old Testament reading
1 Samuel 19:1-18
And Saul spoke to Jonathan, his son, and to all his servants, that they should kill David. But Jonathan, Saul’s son, delighted very much in David. Jonathan told David, saying, “My father Saul seeks to kill you. Therefore, be on guard in the morning; stay in a secret place and hide yourself. And I will go out and stand beside my father in the field where you are. Then I will speak about you to my father, and what I observe I will report to you.”
Jonathan spoke positively of David to Saul his father and said to him, “Do not let the king sin against his servant, against David, because he has not sinned against you, and because his deeds have been very good toward you. For he took his life in his hand and struck down the Philistine, and the LORD made a great salvation for all Israel. You saw it and rejoiced. Now why then would you sin against innocent blood, to kill David without cause?”
So Saul listened to the voice of Jonathan and Saul vowed, “As the LORD lives, he will not be killed.”
Jonathan called David, and Jonathan reported to him all these words. Then Jonathan brought David to Saul, and he was in his presence as previously.
Then there was war again, and David went out and fought with the Philistines. He slew them with a great slaughter and they fled from him.
Now an evil spirit from the LORD was upon Saul as he was sitting in his house with his spear in his hand while David was playing an instrument with his hand. Then Saul sought to pin David to the wall with the spear, but he escaped from Saul’s presence. He struck the spear into the wall. But David fled and escaped that night.
Saul also sent messengers to the house of David, to watch him and to slay him in the morning. But Michal, wife of David, told him, saying, “If you do not save your life tonight, tomorrow you will be dead.” So Michal let David down through a window, and he went and fled to safety. Michal took an idol and laid it in the bed, and put a braided goat hair pillow for its head and covered it with clothes.
When Saul sent messengers to take David, she said, “He is sick.”
Saul sent the messengers again to see David, saying, “Bring him up to me in the bed, that I may kill him.” When the messengers came in, behold, there was the idol in the bed with a goat hair pillow for its head.
Saul said to Michal, “Why have you betrayed me and sent away my enemy, so that he escaped?”
And Michal said to Saul, “He said to me, ‘Let me go. Why should I kill you?’ ”
Now David fled, and he escaped and came to Samuel at Ramah. And he reported to him all that Saul had done to him. And he and Samuel went and stayed in Naioth.
Silence may be kept.
New Testament reading
Acts 1:1-14
The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, concerning all that Jesus began both to do and teach, until the day when He was taken up, after He had given commandments through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom He had chosen, to whom He presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs, appearing to them for forty days, and speaking concerning the kingdom of God. Being assembled with them, He commanded them, “Do not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, of which you have heard from Me. For John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
So when they had come together, they asked Him, “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”
He said to them, “It is not for you to know the times or the dates, which the Father has fixed by His own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
When He had spoken these things, while they looked, He was taken up. And a cloud removed Him from their sight.
While they looked intently toward heaven as He ascended, behold, two men stood by them in white garments. They said, “Men of Galilee, why stand looking toward heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you to heaven, will come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven.”
Then they returned to Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, which is a Sabbath day’s walk from Jerusalem. When they had entered, they went up into the upper room, where they were staying: Peter, James, John, and Andrew; Philip and Thomas; Bartholomew and Matthew; James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot; and Judas the son of James. These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brothers.
Silence may be kept.
The Benedictus (The Song of Zechariah)
Luke 1:68-79
Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
for He has visited and redeemed His people,
and has raised up a horn of salvation for us
in the house of His servant David,
as He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets of long ago,
that we should be saved from our enemies
and from the hand of all who hate us,
to perform the mercy promised to our fathers
and to remember His holy covenant,
the oath which He swore to our father Abraham,
to grant us that we, being delivered out of the hand of our enemies,
might serve Him without fear,
in holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our lives.
And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Highest;
for you will go before the presence of the Lord to prepare His ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to His people
by the remission of their sins,
through the tender mercy of our God,
whereby the sunrise from on high has visited us;
to give light to those who sit in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Glory to the Father and to the Son
and to the Holy Spirit;
as it was in the beginning, is now,
and will be forever. Amen.
Brief silence.
The Apostle’s Creed
Let us unite in this historic confession of the Christian faith:
I believe in God,
the Father Almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ,
his only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the Holy Spirit
and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose again.
He ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the
right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge
the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.
Amen.
Intercession and thanksgiving
Prayers may be offered for:
the day and its tasks
the world and its needs
the church and her life
Prayers may include the following concerns:
The media and the arts
Farming and fishing
Commerce and industry
Those whose work is unfulfilling, stressful, or fraught with danger
All who are unemployed
Other intercessions and supplications may be offered as the Holy Spirit leads.
Response
Father, hear our prayer,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Silence may be kept.
Collect of the day
Almighty God, who sent your Holy Spirit to be the life and light of your Church: open our hearts to the riches of your grace, that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit in love and joy and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Amen.
The Lord’s Prayer
As our Savior taught us, so we pray
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
forever. Amen.
Conclusion
The Lord bless us, and preserve us from all evil, and keep us in eternal life.
Amen.