Lectio Concordia

Spiritual Blessings – Saturday

Preparing for the Second Sunday after Christmas

Series: Lectio Concordia

January 4, 2025 By Rev. Mark Ryman

• Online jigsaw puzzle of today's reading • Index

• Collect: Blessed Father, fount of every blessing, as you made your Son to grow in wisdom and stature, increase in us all spiritual graces through the Spirit of the same Christ who reigns with you, God forever. Amen.

• Psalm 144:12–15

• Psalm 103:10–14

• In the evening, when you go to bed, you shall bless yourself with the holy cross and say:

In the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Then, kneeling or standing, say the Creed and pray the Lord’s Prayer. If you choose, you may, in addition, say this little prayer:

I thank you, my heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, your dear Son, that you have graciously kept me this day. And I beseech you to forgive me all my sins, where I have done wrong, and graciously keep me this night. For into your hands I commend myself, my body and soul, and all things. Let your holy angel be with me, that the wicked foe may have no power over me. Amen.

Then go to sleep promptly and cheerfully. (The Small Catechism, Evening Prayer)

• Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing Tune

Come, thou Fount of every blessing;
tune my heart to sing thy grace;
streams of mercy, never ceasing,
call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
sung by flaming tongues above;
praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
mount of God’s unchanging love!

Here I raise my Ebenezer;
hither by thy help I’m come;
and I hope, by thy good pleasure,
safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
wandering from the fold of God;
he, to rescue me from danger,
interposed his precious blood.

O to grace how great a debtor
daily I’m constrained to be!
Let that grace now, like a fetter,
bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love;
here’s my heart; O take and seal it;
seal it for thy courts above.

• Benediction: May the Lord bless you with every spiritual blessing and cause you to grow in grace and wisdom throughout your years. Amen.

• Memory Verse: You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. (John 15:16)

• Memory Verse Aid: YDNCM, BICY AAYTYSGABF ATYFSA, STWYATF IMN, HMGITY. (John 15:16)