Search Me, O God, And Know Me
Worship
IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD
Scriptures For The Lectionary Speaking Choir
Suggestions:
Use before the pastoral prayer.
Two asterisks mark optional additions to the passage.
5 readers -- an older, mature male and female, a young man, 2
young women
Key:
1 = older man
2 = older woman
3 = young man
4 = first young woman
5 = second young woman
1: O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit
down and when I rise up;
2: You discern my thoughts from far away.
3: You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted
with all my ways.
4: Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it
completely.
3: You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.
ALL: Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I
cannot attain it.
*Optional addition #1 in brackets (139:7-12)
[3: Where can I go from your spirit?
1: Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven,
you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
3: If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest
limits of the sea,
2: even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall
hold me fast.
1: If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light
around me become night,"
4: even the darkness is not dark to you;
5: the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to
you.]
2: For it was you who formed my inward parts;
4: you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I
am fearfully and wonderfully made.
ALL: Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.
2: My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in
secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
3: Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
4: In your book were written all the days that were formed for
me, when none of them has yet existed.
ALL: How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the
sum of them!
2: I try to count them -- they are more than the sand; I come to
the end -- I am still with you.
*Optional addition #2 in brackets (139:23-24)
[ALL: Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my
thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in
the way everlasting.]
Use before the pastoral prayer.
Two asterisks mark optional additions to the passage.
5 readers -- an older, mature male and female, a young man, 2
young women
Key:
1 = older man
2 = older woman
3 = young man
4 = first young woman
5 = second young woman
1: O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit
down and when I rise up;
2: You discern my thoughts from far away.
3: You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted
with all my ways.
4: Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it
completely.
3: You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.
ALL: Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I
cannot attain it.
*Optional addition #1 in brackets (139:7-12)
[3: Where can I go from your spirit?
1: Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven,
you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
3: If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest
limits of the sea,
2: even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall
hold me fast.
1: If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light
around me become night,"
4: even the darkness is not dark to you;
5: the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to
you.]
2: For it was you who formed my inward parts;
4: you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I
am fearfully and wonderfully made.
ALL: Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.
2: My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in
secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
3: Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
4: In your book were written all the days that were formed for
me, when none of them has yet existed.
ALL: How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the
sum of them!
2: I try to count them -- they are more than the sand; I come to
the end -- I am still with you.
*Optional addition #2 in brackets (139:23-24)
[ALL: Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my
thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in
the way everlasting.]
