All Hallows Evening Prayer for Saturday Evening (October 30, 2021)
Evening Prayer
The Service of LightJesus Christ is the light of the world.
A light no darkness can extinguish.
Open this link to hear Carl P. Schalk’s choral arrangement “Joyous Light of Glory.”
Joyous light ,
joyous light, of glory
of the immortal Father,
Heavenly, holy, blessed Jesus Christ,
We have come to the setting of the Sun
And we look to the evening light.
We sing to God,
we sing to God,
we sing to God,
we sing to God
the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
You, you are worthy of being praised,
of being praised with pure voices forever.
O Son of God,
O Son of God,
O Son of God,
O Son of God
O Giver of life,
The universe proclaims your glory.
Thanksgiving
Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right to give our thanks and praise.
Blessed are you, Creator of the universe,
from old you have led your people by night and day.
May the light of your Christ make our darkness bright,
for your Word and your presence are the light of our pathways,
and you are the light and life of all creation.
Amen.
Psalm 141 is sung and incense may be burned.
Open this link in a new tab to hear Psalm 141 from the Lutheran Service Book.
Let my prayer rise before you as incense,
the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.
the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.
O Lord, I call you; come to me quickly;
Hear my voice when I cry to you.
Let my prayer rise before you as incense,
the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.
Set a watch before my mouth, O Lord,
and guard the doors of my lips.
Let my heart not incline to any evil thing;
let me not be occupied in wickedness with evildoers.
But my eyes are turned to you, O God,
in you I take refuge.
Strip me not of my life.
Glory be 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.
Hear my voice when I cry to you.
Let my prayer rise before you as incense,
the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.
Set a watch before my mouth, O Lord,
and guard the doors of my lips.
Let my heart not incline to any evil thing;
let me not be occupied in wickedness with evildoers.
But my eyes are turned to you, O God,
in you I take refuge.
Strip me not of my life.
Glory be 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.
Let my prayer rise before you as incense,
the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.
Silence is kept.
May our prayers come before you, O God, as incense, and may your presence surround and fill us, so that in union with all creation, we might sing your praise and your love in our lives. Amen.
The Psalms
Open this link in a new tab to hear Daniel Kallman’s choral arrangement of Jonathan Asprey’s paraphrase of Psalm 84, “How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place.”
How lovely is thy dwelling place,
O Lord of hosts, to me.
My soul is longing and fainting,
The courts of the Lord to see.
My heart and flesh, they are singing,
For joy to the living God.
How lovely is thy dwelling-place,
O Lord of hosts, to me.
Even the sparrow finds a home,
Where he can settle down.
And the swallow she can build a nest,
Where she may lay her young.
Within the court of the Lord of hosts,
My King, my Lord and my God.
And happy are those who are dwelling where
The song of praise is sung.
And I’d rather be a door-keeper
And only stay a day,
Than live the life of a sinner
And have to stay away.
For the Lord is shining as the sun,
And the Lord, he’s like a shield;
And no good thing does he withhold
From those who walk the way.
How lovely is thy dwelling place,
O Lord of hosts, to me.
My soul is longing and fainting,
The courts of the Lord to see.
My heart and flesh, they are singing,
For joy to the living God.
How lovely is thy dwelling-place,
O Lord of hosts, to me.
Silence is kept.
Lord God,
sustain us in this vale of tears
with the vision of your grace and glory,
that, strengthened by the bread of life,
we may come to your eternal dwelling place;
in the power of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
The Proclamation of the Word
The Reading
Ruth 1:1-18 A Daughter-In-Law's Loyalty
Long ago, in the days before Israel had a king, there was a famine in the land. So a man named Elimelech, who belonged to the clan of Ephrath and who lived in Bethlehem in Judah, went with his wife Naomi and their two sons Mahlon and Chilion to live for a while in the country of Moab. While they were living there, Elimelech died, and Naomi was left alone with her two sons, who married Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. About ten years later Mahlon and Chilion also died, and Naomi was left all alone, without husband or sons.
Some time later Naomi heard that the Lord had blessed his people by giving them good crops; so she got ready to leave Moab with her daughters-in-law. They started out together to go back to Judah, but on the way she said to them, “Go back home and stay with your mothers. May the Lord be as good to you as you have been to me and to those who have died. And may the Lord make it possible for each of you to marry again and have a home.”
So Naomi kissed them good-bye. But they started crying and said to her, “No! We will go with you to your people.”
“You must go back, my daughters,” Naomi answered. “Why do you want to come with me? Do you think I could have sons again for you to marry? 1Go back home, for I am too old to get married again. Even if I thought there was still hope, and so got married tonight and had sons, would you wait until they had grown up? Would this keep you from marrying someone else? No, my daughters, you know that's impossible. The Lord has turned against me, and I feel very sorry for you.”
Again they started crying. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law good-bye and went back home, but Ruth held on to her. So Naomi said to her, “Ruth, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her god. Go back home with her.”
But Ruth answered, “Don't ask me to leave you! Let me go with you. Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Wherever you die, I will die, and that is where I will be buried. May the Lord's worst punishment come upon me if I let anything but death separate me from you!”
When Naomi saw that Ruth was determined to go with her, she said nothing more.
Silence is kept.
May your word live in us
and bear much fruit to your glory
The Homily
I don’t know the reason, but as long as I can remember, I have been drawn to the Book of Ruth. It may be because I as a child was taught to value loyalty, being loyal to family and friends and expecting their loyalty in return. If I could avoid it, I was taught, I should not let people down. Friendship is something that we should highly value and not take lightly.
Ruth was a Moabite. Her people were distant relatives of the people of Israel. They were descendants of Moab, a nephew of Lot who was the nephew of Abraham. Abraham God called out of the city of Ur and made a covenant with him. A covenant is a special agreement.
In that covenant God promised Abraham whose wife Sarah was childless that he would have as many descendants as the stars in the sky and Abraham believed him. The people of Israel descended from Abraham, from his son Isaac to whom Sarah gave birth in her old age.
The Moabites were not the descendants of Abraham and therefore they were outside the covenant God made with Abraham. They were outside the covenant that God made with the people of Israel before they entered the land God had promised them, having delivered them from slavery in the land of Egypt. They were Gentiles. They were not heirs of the two covenants.
Both Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi were widows. Unless they remarried, widows were dependent upon the kindness of relatives for their support. Naomi had no close relatives in Judah from where she and her husband and sons had come. For widows without relatives in Old Testament times, life was very difficult. In Judah they were permitted to glean the fields for grain during the harvest. They ground the grain into flour from which they made bread.
In choosing to go with Naomi instead of returning to her own family, Ruth chose not only to turn her back on the people of Moab, its god Chemosh, and her family, she chose the difficult life of a foreign widow, a Gentile widow, in Judah. She chose a life of poverty. Her loyalty to her mother-in-law Naomi, her devotion and faithfulness to Naomi, must be considered with this in mind. She made a major sacrifice for her mother-in-law.
In our day if we get tired of someone with whom we are involved in any kind of relationship, we ghost them. We disappear from their lives with no word of explanation. We cut off all communication with them and avoid them. We show little or no regard for the individual whom we discard in this fashion, much less loyalty to them. We discard people like disposable foam cups and plastic water bottles. In our actions we devalue them as human beings and as a consequence we devalue ourselves as human beings.
Ruth would become the wife of Boaz. God enabled her to conceive and bear a son, Obed, the father of Jesse and the grandfather of King David. She is one of the ancestors of Jesus. Yes, Jesus had a Gentile for an ancestor.
Now God, we can safely assume, was working behind the scenes. He found in Ruth a willing heart, a woman who loved her mother-in-law so much that she would not abandon her. She had no ties of kinship to Naomi. Her only ties to Naomi were that she had married one of Naomi's sons. There was nothing to bind her to Naomi except affection for her mother-in-law and attachment to her.
God’s choice of Ruth to be the great grandmother of King David and the ancestor of Jesus foreshadows God’ extension of salvation not just to the people of Israel, the people of the covenant, but to the Gentiles too, to all people. The New Testament speaks of God making a new covenant, a covenant with all humankind, a covenant not made with the blood of rams, but with the blood of Jesus.
Giving up one’s people, one’s god, and one’s family is not a small thing to do. In the Old Testament times the ties of an individual to a people, a god, and a family were very important ones. In the twenty-first century we may not fully appreciate the importance of these ties in the time in which Ruth lived.
Loyalty in the Book of Ruth is understood to be interpersonal. It is loyalty to a person, to someone to whom we have a personal attachment. This is the way that loyalty is understood throughout the Bible. We are loyal to a friend like David was loyal to his friend Jonathan. We are loyal to someone to whom we are related by marriage like Ruth was loyal to Naomi. We are loyal to God and to Jesus who was sent by God and in whom God was reconciling us to himself.
What about Jesus’ teaching and example? They are tied to our loyalty to Jesus. Our adherence to Jesus’ teaching and example shows our loyalty to Jesus. We cannot claim to be loyal to someone to whom we do not pay any heed and whose interests we, with our words and actions, do not represent. If we claim to be a follower of Jesus, we show the truth of our claim by following Jesus. We cannot claim to be one of his followers if we ignore what he says and do what someone else tells us. We are following them, not Jesus. As Jesus pointed to the disciples’ attention, we cannot be loyal to two masters. We will hate one and love the other.
Loyalty in the Book of Ruth is understood to be godly. It conforms to the wishes of God. It serves God’s purposes. Ruth chose not only Naomi and the path that Naomi was going to take but she also chose Naomi’s God. In choosing Naomi’s God, she chose to submit to God’s will.
We can be loyal to someone but our loyalty to them may not be a godly loyalty. For example, we may form a special relationship with someone and give our loyalty to them. However, that individual may not share our beliefs and values and may encourage us to disregard them. The individual in question may encourage us to speak and act in ways that are contrary to what we believe and value and to say and do things that contribute to the erosion of our beliefs and values. Our loyalty to them cannot be regarded as a godly loyalty because it is leading us in a direction away from God. It is for this reason that the apostle Paul in his writings does not encourage believers to marry unbelievers. He was concerned about the influence that the unbeliever might have upon the believer.
I have personally seen how one partner in a relationship can undermine the beliefs and values of the other partner. What happened in this particular case the one partner put their loyalty to other partner before their own beliefs and values and eventually abandoned their beliefs and values in order to please the other partner.
It is really important to give careful thought to whom we are going give our loyalty. It is also equally as important to exercise the same care in choosing our friends. We do not want to choose friends who will negatively influence us and cause us to compromise and eventually give up our beliefs and values.
Followers of Jesus’ first loyalty is to Jesus. If we are going to be faithful and devoted to one person, that person is Jesus. All other loyalties that we have are subordinate to our loyalty to him and move us Godward.
Ruth was faithful and devoted to Naomi. Her faithfulness and devotion were a Godward movement for her. Ruth’s loyalty is an example for us all, a loyalty that moves us closer to God. This is the kind of loyalty we should strive for in our own lives.
Silence is kept.
The Gospel Canticle
Open this link in a new tab to hear Ann Krentz’s choral arrangement of “My Soul Proclaims Your Greatness.”
My soul proclaims your greatness, O Lord;
I sing my Savior’s praise!
Great wonders you have done for me,
and holy is your name.
My soul proclaims your greatness, Lord;
I sing my Savior’s praise!
You looked upon my lowliness,
and I am full of grace.
Now ev’ry land and ev’ry age
this blessing shall proclaim—
great wonders you have done for me,
and holy is your name.
My soul proclaims your greatness, O Lord;
I sing my Savior’s praise!
Great wonders you have done for me,
and holy is your name.
To all who live in holy fear
Your mercy ever flows.
With mighty arm you dash the proud,
Their scheming hearts expose.
The ruthless you have cast aside,
the lonely throned instead;
the hungry filled with all good things,
the rich sent off unfed.
My soul proclaims your greatness, O Lord;
I sing my Savior’s praise!
Great wonders you have done for me,
and holy is your name.
To Israel, your servant blest,
your help is ever sure;
the promise to our parents made
their children will secure.
Sing glory to the Holy One,
give honor to the Word,
and praise the Pow’r of the Most High,
one God, by all adored.
My soul proclaims your greatness, O Lord;
I sing my Savior’s praise!
Great wonders you have done for me,
and holy is your name,
and holy is your name.
Intercessions
Let us complete our evening prayer to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For peace from on high and our salvation, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For the welfare of all churches and for the unity of the human family, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For (name), our bishop, and (name), our pastor, and for all ministers of the Gospel, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For our nation, its government, and for all who serve and protect us, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For this city (town, university, monastery…). For every city and community, and for all those living in them, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For the good earth which God has given us and for the wisdom and will to conserve it, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For the safety of travelers, the recovery of the sick, the care of the destitute and the release of prisoners, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For an angel of peace to guide and protect us, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For a peaceful evening and a night free from sin, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For a Christian end to our lives and for all who have fallen asleep in Christ, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
In the communion of the Holy Spirit (and of all the saints), let us commend ourselves and one another to the living God through Christ our Lord.
To you, O Lord.
Free Prayer
In silent or spontaneous prayer all bring before God the concerns of the day.
The Collect
In darkness and in light,
in trouble and in joy,
help us, heavenly Father,
to trust your love,
to serve your purpose,
and to praise your name,
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Lord's Prayer
And now, as our Saviour has taught us,
we are bold to say,
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,
the power, and the glory
for ever and ever.
Amen.
Dismissal
Open this link in a new tab to hear Steven C. Warner’s adaptation of the Old Testament canticle, “The Song of Ruth.”
Wherever you go,
there shall be my journey.
Wherever you live,
there shall be my home.
Your people shall be my kin and my companion,
and your God I shall call as my own.
1 Never let me part from your side!
Never let our paths be divided,
for as road begets road,
and days run their course,
so is my path ever destined with yours.
Wherever you go,
there shall be my journey.
Wherever you live,
there shall be my home.
Your people shall be my kin and my companion,
and your God I shall call as my own.
2 Join your heart with mine, all our days.
Weave your hands in mine, on our journey,
when all wand’rings are done,
when one road remains,
Love, make us one in God’s promise to come.
the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.
Silence is kept.
May our prayers come before you, O God, as incense, and may your presence surround and fill us, so that in union with all creation, we might sing your praise and your love in our lives. Amen.
The Psalms
Open this link in a new tab to hear Daniel Kallman’s choral arrangement of Jonathan Asprey’s paraphrase of Psalm 84, “How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place.”
How lovely is thy dwelling place,
O Lord of hosts, to me.
My soul is longing and fainting,
The courts of the Lord to see.
My heart and flesh, they are singing,
For joy to the living God.
How lovely is thy dwelling-place,
O Lord of hosts, to me.
Even the sparrow finds a home,
Where he can settle down.
And the swallow she can build a nest,
Where she may lay her young.
Within the court of the Lord of hosts,
My King, my Lord and my God.
And happy are those who are dwelling where
The song of praise is sung.
And I’d rather be a door-keeper
And only stay a day,
Than live the life of a sinner
And have to stay away.
For the Lord is shining as the sun,
And the Lord, he’s like a shield;
And no good thing does he withhold
From those who walk the way.
How lovely is thy dwelling place,
O Lord of hosts, to me.
My soul is longing and fainting,
The courts of the Lord to see.
My heart and flesh, they are singing,
For joy to the living God.
How lovely is thy dwelling-place,
O Lord of hosts, to me.
Silence is kept.
Lord God,
sustain us in this vale of tears
with the vision of your grace and glory,
that, strengthened by the bread of life,
we may come to your eternal dwelling place;
in the power of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
The Proclamation of the Word
The Reading
Ruth 1:1-18 A Daughter-In-Law's Loyalty
Long ago, in the days before Israel had a king, there was a famine in the land. So a man named Elimelech, who belonged to the clan of Ephrath and who lived in Bethlehem in Judah, went with his wife Naomi and their two sons Mahlon and Chilion to live for a while in the country of Moab. While they were living there, Elimelech died, and Naomi was left alone with her two sons, who married Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. About ten years later Mahlon and Chilion also died, and Naomi was left all alone, without husband or sons.
Some time later Naomi heard that the Lord had blessed his people by giving them good crops; so she got ready to leave Moab with her daughters-in-law. They started out together to go back to Judah, but on the way she said to them, “Go back home and stay with your mothers. May the Lord be as good to you as you have been to me and to those who have died. And may the Lord make it possible for each of you to marry again and have a home.”
So Naomi kissed them good-bye. But they started crying and said to her, “No! We will go with you to your people.”
“You must go back, my daughters,” Naomi answered. “Why do you want to come with me? Do you think I could have sons again for you to marry? 1Go back home, for I am too old to get married again. Even if I thought there was still hope, and so got married tonight and had sons, would you wait until they had grown up? Would this keep you from marrying someone else? No, my daughters, you know that's impossible. The Lord has turned against me, and I feel very sorry for you.”
Again they started crying. Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law good-bye and went back home, but Ruth held on to her. So Naomi said to her, “Ruth, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her god. Go back home with her.”
But Ruth answered, “Don't ask me to leave you! Let me go with you. Wherever you go, I will go; wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. Wherever you die, I will die, and that is where I will be buried. May the Lord's worst punishment come upon me if I let anything but death separate me from you!”
When Naomi saw that Ruth was determined to go with her, she said nothing more.
Silence is kept.
May your word live in us
and bear much fruit to your glory
The Homily
A Lesson in Loyalty
I don’t know the reason, but as long as I can remember, I have been drawn to the Book of Ruth. It may be because I as a child was taught to value loyalty, being loyal to family and friends and expecting their loyalty in return. If I could avoid it, I was taught, I should not let people down. Friendship is something that we should highly value and not take lightly.
Ruth was a Moabite. Her people were distant relatives of the people of Israel. They were descendants of Moab, a nephew of Lot who was the nephew of Abraham. Abraham God called out of the city of Ur and made a covenant with him. A covenant is a special agreement.
In that covenant God promised Abraham whose wife Sarah was childless that he would have as many descendants as the stars in the sky and Abraham believed him. The people of Israel descended from Abraham, from his son Isaac to whom Sarah gave birth in her old age.
The Moabites were not the descendants of Abraham and therefore they were outside the covenant God made with Abraham. They were outside the covenant that God made with the people of Israel before they entered the land God had promised them, having delivered them from slavery in the land of Egypt. They were Gentiles. They were not heirs of the two covenants.
Both Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi were widows. Unless they remarried, widows were dependent upon the kindness of relatives for their support. Naomi had no close relatives in Judah from where she and her husband and sons had come. For widows without relatives in Old Testament times, life was very difficult. In Judah they were permitted to glean the fields for grain during the harvest. They ground the grain into flour from which they made bread.
In choosing to go with Naomi instead of returning to her own family, Ruth chose not only to turn her back on the people of Moab, its god Chemosh, and her family, she chose the difficult life of a foreign widow, a Gentile widow, in Judah. She chose a life of poverty. Her loyalty to her mother-in-law Naomi, her devotion and faithfulness to Naomi, must be considered with this in mind. She made a major sacrifice for her mother-in-law.
In our day if we get tired of someone with whom we are involved in any kind of relationship, we ghost them. We disappear from their lives with no word of explanation. We cut off all communication with them and avoid them. We show little or no regard for the individual whom we discard in this fashion, much less loyalty to them. We discard people like disposable foam cups and plastic water bottles. In our actions we devalue them as human beings and as a consequence we devalue ourselves as human beings.
Ruth would become the wife of Boaz. God enabled her to conceive and bear a son, Obed, the father of Jesse and the grandfather of King David. She is one of the ancestors of Jesus. Yes, Jesus had a Gentile for an ancestor.
Now God, we can safely assume, was working behind the scenes. He found in Ruth a willing heart, a woman who loved her mother-in-law so much that she would not abandon her. She had no ties of kinship to Naomi. Her only ties to Naomi were that she had married one of Naomi's sons. There was nothing to bind her to Naomi except affection for her mother-in-law and attachment to her.
God’s choice of Ruth to be the great grandmother of King David and the ancestor of Jesus foreshadows God’ extension of salvation not just to the people of Israel, the people of the covenant, but to the Gentiles too, to all people. The New Testament speaks of God making a new covenant, a covenant with all humankind, a covenant not made with the blood of rams, but with the blood of Jesus.
Giving up one’s people, one’s god, and one’s family is not a small thing to do. In the Old Testament times the ties of an individual to a people, a god, and a family were very important ones. In the twenty-first century we may not fully appreciate the importance of these ties in the time in which Ruth lived.
Loyalty in the Book of Ruth is understood to be interpersonal. It is loyalty to a person, to someone to whom we have a personal attachment. This is the way that loyalty is understood throughout the Bible. We are loyal to a friend like David was loyal to his friend Jonathan. We are loyal to someone to whom we are related by marriage like Ruth was loyal to Naomi. We are loyal to God and to Jesus who was sent by God and in whom God was reconciling us to himself.
What about Jesus’ teaching and example? They are tied to our loyalty to Jesus. Our adherence to Jesus’ teaching and example shows our loyalty to Jesus. We cannot claim to be loyal to someone to whom we do not pay any heed and whose interests we, with our words and actions, do not represent. If we claim to be a follower of Jesus, we show the truth of our claim by following Jesus. We cannot claim to be one of his followers if we ignore what he says and do what someone else tells us. We are following them, not Jesus. As Jesus pointed to the disciples’ attention, we cannot be loyal to two masters. We will hate one and love the other.
Loyalty in the Book of Ruth is understood to be godly. It conforms to the wishes of God. It serves God’s purposes. Ruth chose not only Naomi and the path that Naomi was going to take but she also chose Naomi’s God. In choosing Naomi’s God, she chose to submit to God’s will.
We can be loyal to someone but our loyalty to them may not be a godly loyalty. For example, we may form a special relationship with someone and give our loyalty to them. However, that individual may not share our beliefs and values and may encourage us to disregard them. The individual in question may encourage us to speak and act in ways that are contrary to what we believe and value and to say and do things that contribute to the erosion of our beliefs and values. Our loyalty to them cannot be regarded as a godly loyalty because it is leading us in a direction away from God. It is for this reason that the apostle Paul in his writings does not encourage believers to marry unbelievers. He was concerned about the influence that the unbeliever might have upon the believer.
I have personally seen how one partner in a relationship can undermine the beliefs and values of the other partner. What happened in this particular case the one partner put their loyalty to other partner before their own beliefs and values and eventually abandoned their beliefs and values in order to please the other partner.
It is really important to give careful thought to whom we are going give our loyalty. It is also equally as important to exercise the same care in choosing our friends. We do not want to choose friends who will negatively influence us and cause us to compromise and eventually give up our beliefs and values.
Followers of Jesus’ first loyalty is to Jesus. If we are going to be faithful and devoted to one person, that person is Jesus. All other loyalties that we have are subordinate to our loyalty to him and move us Godward.
Ruth was faithful and devoted to Naomi. Her faithfulness and devotion were a Godward movement for her. Ruth’s loyalty is an example for us all, a loyalty that moves us closer to God. This is the kind of loyalty we should strive for in our own lives.
Silence is kept.
The Gospel Canticle
Open this link in a new tab to hear Ann Krentz’s choral arrangement of “My Soul Proclaims Your Greatness.”
My soul proclaims your greatness, O Lord;
I sing my Savior’s praise!
Great wonders you have done for me,
and holy is your name.
My soul proclaims your greatness, Lord;
I sing my Savior’s praise!
You looked upon my lowliness,
and I am full of grace.
Now ev’ry land and ev’ry age
this blessing shall proclaim—
great wonders you have done for me,
and holy is your name.
My soul proclaims your greatness, O Lord;
I sing my Savior’s praise!
Great wonders you have done for me,
and holy is your name.
To all who live in holy fear
Your mercy ever flows.
With mighty arm you dash the proud,
Their scheming hearts expose.
The ruthless you have cast aside,
the lonely throned instead;
the hungry filled with all good things,
the rich sent off unfed.
My soul proclaims your greatness, O Lord;
I sing my Savior’s praise!
Great wonders you have done for me,
and holy is your name.
To Israel, your servant blest,
your help is ever sure;
the promise to our parents made
their children will secure.
Sing glory to the Holy One,
give honor to the Word,
and praise the Pow’r of the Most High,
one God, by all adored.
My soul proclaims your greatness, O Lord;
I sing my Savior’s praise!
Great wonders you have done for me,
and holy is your name,
and holy is your name.
Intercessions
Let us complete our evening prayer to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For peace from on high and our salvation, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For the welfare of all churches and for the unity of the human family, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For (name), our bishop, and (name), our pastor, and for all ministers of the Gospel, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For our nation, its government, and for all who serve and protect us, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For this city (town, university, monastery…). For every city and community, and for all those living in them, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For the good earth which God has given us and for the wisdom and will to conserve it, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For the safety of travelers, the recovery of the sick, the care of the destitute and the release of prisoners, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For an angel of peace to guide and protect us, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For a peaceful evening and a night free from sin, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
For a Christian end to our lives and for all who have fallen asleep in Christ, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy.
In the communion of the Holy Spirit (and of all the saints), let us commend ourselves and one another to the living God through Christ our Lord.
To you, O Lord.
Free Prayer
In silent or spontaneous prayer all bring before God the concerns of the day.
The Collect
In darkness and in light,
in trouble and in joy,
help us, heavenly Father,
to trust your love,
to serve your purpose,
and to praise your name,
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The Lord's Prayer
And now, as our Saviour has taught us,
we are bold to say,
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,
the power, and the glory
for ever and ever.
Amen.
Dismissal
Open this link in a new tab to hear Steven C. Warner’s adaptation of the Old Testament canticle, “The Song of Ruth.”
Wherever you go,
there shall be my journey.
Wherever you live,
there shall be my home.
Your people shall be my kin and my companion,
and your God I shall call as my own.
1 Never let me part from your side!
Never let our paths be divided,
for as road begets road,
and days run their course,
so is my path ever destined with yours.
Wherever you go,
there shall be my journey.
Wherever you live,
there shall be my home.
Your people shall be my kin and my companion,
and your God I shall call as my own.
2 Join your heart with mine, all our days.
Weave your hands in mine, on our journey,
when all wand’rings are done,
when one road remains,
Love, make us one in God’s promise to come.
Wherever you go,
there shall be my journey.
Wherever you live,
there shall be my home.
Your people shall be my kin and my companion,
and your God I shall call as my own.
The Lord be with you.
The Lord bless you.
Let us praise the Lord,
Thanks be to God.
May the Lord bless and protect us
May he show us mercy and kindness
May the Lord be good to us and give us peace.
there shall be my journey.
Wherever you live,
there shall be my home.
Your people shall be my kin and my companion,
and your God I shall call as my own.
The Lord be with you.
The Lord bless you.
Let us praise the Lord,
Thanks be to God.
May the Lord bless and protect us
May he show us mercy and kindness
May the Lord be good to us and give us peace.
Amen.
Numbers 6: 24-26
Numbers 6: 24-26
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