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5Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, O Jerusalem,
   and put on for ever the beauty of the glory from God.
² Put on the robe of the righteousness that comes from God;
   put on your head the diadem of the glory of the Everlasting;
³ for God will show your splendour everywhere under heaven.
⁴ For God will give you evermore the name,
   ‘Righteous Peace, Godly Glory’.

⁵ Arise, O Jerusalem, stand upon the height;
   look towards the east,
and see your children gathered from west and east
   at the word of the Holy One,
   rejoicing that God has remembered them.
⁶ For they went out from you on foot,
   led away by their enemies;
but God will bring them back to you,
   carried in glory, as on a royal throne.
⁷ For God has ordered that every high mountain and the everlasting hills be made low
   and the valleys filled up, to make level ground,
   so that Israel may walk safely in the glory of God.
⁸ The woods and every fragrant tree
   have shaded Israel at God’s command.
⁹ For God will lead Israel with joy,
   in the light of his glory,
   with the mercy and righteousness that come from him.

Psalm 126

A Harvest of Joy

A Song of Ascents.
¹ When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,^*
   we were like those who dream.
² Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
   and our tongue with shouts of joy;
then it was said among the nations,
   ‘The Lord has done great things for them.’
³ The Lord has done great things for us,
   and we rejoiced.

⁴ Restore our fortunes, O Lord,
   like the watercourses in the Negeb.
⁵ May those who sow in tears
   reap with shouts of joy.
⁶ Those who go out weeping,
   bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy,
   carrying their sheaves.

Paul’s Prayer for the Philippians

3 I thank my God every time I remember you, ⁴constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, ⁵because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now. ⁶I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. ⁸For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus. ⁹And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight ¹⁰to help you to determine what is best, so that on the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, ¹¹having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.

The Proclamation of John the Baptist

3In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler^* of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler^* of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler^* of Abilene, ²during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. ³He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, ⁴as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,
‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
“Prepare the way of the Lord,
   make his paths straight.
⁵ Every valley shall be filled,
   and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
   and the rough ways made smooth;
⁶ and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” ’