First Reading
Isaiah 41:13-20
Read this as the first big movement of the day. Notice what God is doing, who is speaking, and what part of the story or teaching should stay with you.
13For I am the Lord your God, who take you by the hand, and say to you: Fear not, I have helped you.
14Fear not, you worm of Jacob, you that are dead of Israel: I have helped you, says the Lord: and your Redeemer the Holy One of Israel.
15I have made you as a new thrashing wain, with teeth like a saw: you shall thrash the mountains, and break them in pieces: and shall make the hills as chaff.
16You shall fan them, and the wind shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them: and you shall rejoice in the Lord, in the Holy One of Israel you shall be joyful.
17The needy and the poor seek for waters, and there are none: their tongue has been dry with thirst. I the Lord will hear them, I the God of Israel will not leave them.
18I will open rivers in the high bills, and fountains in the midst of the plains: I will turn the desert into pools of waters, and the impassable land into streams of waters.
19I will plant in the wilderness the cedar, and the thorn, and the myrtle, and the olive tree: I will set in the desert the fir tree, the elm, and the box tree together:
20That they may see and know, and consider, and understand together that the hand of the Lord has done this, and the Holy One of Israel has created it.