He Satisfies the Thirsty and the Hungry He Fills With Good Things: Lent Daybook 31
Take a few deep breaths, settle your body, mind, and heart into a quiet space, and let’s begin with prayer.
Opening prayer: Heavenly Father, make me more like Jesus and more like the true self you’ve created as I savor your loving presence today. Please guide my thoughts and impressions by your Holy Spirit. Amen
Look: Last Supper, Margaret Ackland - Source
Listen: Comunión, Maverick City Música (feat. Aaron Moses & Blanca) - Lyrics in English | Spotify w/ lyrics in Spanish | YouTube w/ lyrics in Spanish
Read: Psalm 102; Psalm 107:1-32; Jeremiah 23:1-8; Romans 8:28-39; John 6:52-59
Excerpts:
Let this be recorded for a generation to come, so that a people yet unborn may praise the Lord: that he looked down from his holy height, from heaven the Lord looked at the earth, to hear the groans of the prisoners, to set free those who were doomed to die, so that the name of the Lord may be declared in Zion and his praise in Jerusalem, when peoples gather together, and kingdoms, to serve the Lord.
He has broken my strength in midcourse; he has shortened my days. “O my God,” I say, “do not take me away at the midpoint of my life, you whose years endure throughout all generations.”
Long ago you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you endure; they will all wear out like a garment. You change them like clothing, and they pass away, but you are the same, and your years have no end. The children of your servants shall live secure; their offspring shall be established in your presence.
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Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the Lord. Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who shepherd my people: It is you who have scattered my flock and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. So I will attend to you for your evil doings, says the Lord. Then I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the lands where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them, and they shall no longer fear or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing, says the Lord.
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O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, those he redeemed from trouble and gathered in from the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south.
Some wandered in desert wastes, finding no way to an inhabited town; hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted within them. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress; he led them by a straight way, until they reached an inhabited town. Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wonderful works to humankind. For he satisfies the thirsty, and the hungry he fills with good things. …
Let them extol him in the congregation of the people and praise him in the assembly of the elders.
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What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son but gave him up for all of us, how will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ who died, or rather, who was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
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The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day, for my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which the ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” He said these things while he was teaching in a synagogue at Capernaum.
—Psalm 102:18-28; Jeremiah 23:1-4; Psalm 107:1-9, 32; Romans 8:31-39; John 6:52-59
Pray: On Fridays during Lent, we will pray the traditionally-read prayers of the daily office that draw us into Psalm 95, known in Latin as the Invitatory and the Venite. If you’re reading this prayer with another person, one of you can lead with the first phrase and the other response with the bolded words, then reading the last portion (Psalm 95:1-11) together.
O Lord, open our lips; And our mouth shall proclaim your praise.
O God, make speed to save us; O Lord, make haste to help us.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit; As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
Praise the Lord. The Lord’s Name be praised.
The mercy of the Lord is everlasting: O come, let us adore him.
O come, let us sing unto the Lord; let us heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving and show ourselves glad in him with psalms. For the Lord is a great God and a great King above all gods. In his hand are all the depths of the earth, and the heights of the hills are his also. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands prepared the dry land.
O come, let us worship and fall down, and kneel before the Lord our Maker. For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.
O that today you would listen to his voice: ‘Harden not your hearts as at Meribah, on that day at Massah in the wilderness, when your forebears tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my works. Forty years long I detested that generation and said, ‘This people are wayward in their hearts; they do not know my ways.’ So I swore in my wrath ‘They shall not enter into my rest.’ “
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit; as it was, in the beginning, is now and shall be forever. Amen.
Do: Fast from one kind of food, one meal, or one whole day of eating today. Let your hunger prompt simple dependence and prayer, noticing areas of doubts and unanswered questions that need God’s healing attention.
Traditionally, the Church sets aside Lenten Fridays, the weekday of Jesus’ crucifixion, to abstain from eating meat or to a partial (one meal) or whole fast (24 hours without solid food).
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*Sunday Scripture readings are taken from Year A of the Book of Common Prayer 2019 (Anglican Church of North America). Daily Scripture readings are taken from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and include both Morning and Evening Psalms (Year 1)