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Old Testament Reading - Take Comfort

²¹Are you so ignorant? Are you so deaf to the words of God — the words he gave before the world began? Have you never heard nor understood? ²²It is God who sits above the circle of the earth. (The people below must seem to him like grasshoppers!) He is the one who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and makes his tent from them. ²³He dooms the great men of the world and brings them all to naught. ²⁴They hardly get started, barely take root, when he blows on them and their work withers, and the wind carries them off like straw.

²⁵“With whom will you compare me? Who is my equal?” asks the Holy One.

²⁶Look up into the heavens! Who created all these stars? As a shepherd leads his sheep,^a calling each by its pet name, and counts them to see that none are lost or strayed, so God does with stars and planets!

²⁷O Jacob, O Israel, how can you say that the Lord doesn’t see your troubles and isn’t being fair? ²⁸Don’t you yet understand? Don’t you know by now that the everlasting God, the Creator of the farthest parts of the earth, never grows faint or weary? No one can fathom the depths of his understanding. ²⁹He gives power to the tired and worn out, and strength to the weak. ³⁰Even the youths shall be exhausted, and the young men will all give up. ³¹But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.

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