Sunday, September 10, 2028

³You turn man to destruction, saying, “Return, you children of men.” ⁴For a thousand years in your sight are just like yesterday when it is past, like a watch in the night. ⁵You sweep them away as they sleep. In the morning they sprout like new grass. ⁶In the morning it sprouts and springs up. By evening, it is withered and dry. ¹²So teach us to count our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. ¹³Relent, LORD! How long? Have compassion on your servants! ¹⁴Satisfy us in the morning with your loving kindness, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. ¹⁷Let the favor of the Lord our God be on us. Establish the work of our hands for us. Yes, establish the work of our hands.

⁹yet for love’s sake I rather appeal to you, being such a one as Paul, the aged, but also a prisoner of Jesus Christ. ¹⁰I appeal to you for my child Onesimus, whom I have become the father of in my chains, ¹²I am sending him back. Therefore receive him, that is, my own heart, ¹³whom I desired to keep with me, that on your behalf he might serve me in my chains for the Good News. ¹⁴But I was willing to do nothing without your consent, that your goodness would not be as of necessity, but of free will. ¹⁵For perhaps he was therefore separated from you for a while that you would have him forever, ¹⁶no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a beloved brother—especially to me, but how much rather to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord. ¹⁷If then you count me a partner, receive him as you would receive me.

²⁵Now great multitudes were going with him. He turned and said to them, ²⁶“If anyone comes to me, and doesn’t disregard his own father, mother, wife, children, brothers, and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he can’t be my disciple. ²⁷Whoever doesn’t bear his own cross and come after me, can’t be my disciple. ²⁸For which of you, desiring to build a tower, doesn’t first sit down and count the cost, to see if he has enough to complete it? ²⁹Or perhaps, when he has laid a foundation and isn’t able to finish, everyone who sees begins to mock him, ³⁰saying, ‘This man began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’ ³¹Or what king, as he goes to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? ³²Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends an envoy and asks for conditions of peace. ³³So therefore, whoever of you who doesn’t renounce all that he has, he can’t be my disciple.