Nurture

Bible readings for January 2024

stjohnstmarkchurchburySaturday, December 30, 2023

Happy New Year! Here are the Bible readings for January 2024 which we’ll be using in our two churches. Please make use of these readings and reflect on what they might be saying to you as we enter into the period which the Church calls ‘Epiphany’. It’s the season where Jesus is revealed or recognised, in a number of different ways, to be the Son of God.

The readings

These recognitions include the visit of the foreign Magi from the East, Jesus’ first public miracle at the wedding in Cana and the declaration of two older folks, Simeon and Anna, who had been waiting a very long time for his appearance. These sit alongside some interesting verses from the Old and New Testaments, which speak to each other as well as by themselves.

• Jan 7 – Epiphany: Isaiah 60:1-6; Ephesians 3:1-12; Matthew 2:1-12;
• Jan 14 – 2nd of Epiphany: 1 Samuel 3:1-10; Revelation 5:1-10; John 1:43-end;
• Jan 21 – 3rd of Epiphany: Genesis 14:17-20; Revelation 19:6-10; John 2:1-11;
• Jan 28 – 4th of Epiphany: Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Revelation 12:1-5a; Mark 1:21-28; or
• Jan 28 – Candlemas: Malachi 3:1-5; Hebrews 2:14-end; Luke 2:22-40;

If you don’t have access to a Bible, then please follow this link to the Vanderbilt Divinity Library. It’s not always the same but it’s normally not far off.

The Bible readings for January 2024 also include these words from Psalm 139…

You have searched me and known me

O LORD, you have searched me and known me.

You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.

You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.

Even before a word is on my tongue, O LORD, you know it completely.

You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.

For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well.

My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.

How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!

I try to count them — they are more than the sand; I come to the end — I am still with you.

Thanks again to Olivia Snow for the photo on Unsplash