a thread opens
For I have become like a bottle in the smoke; yet do I not forget your statutes.
The Vigil
Today’s scroll, one verse at a time — each linked to the last by the cross-references rather than by any model of you. The same vigil for everyone, and a different one tomorrow.
My skin is black upon me, and my bones are burned with heat.
from Psalms 119:83
Their visage is blacker than a coal; they are not known in the streets: their skin clings to their bones; it has withered, it has become like a stick.
from Job 30:30 · a strong link
My bone clings to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped with the skin of my teeth.
from Lamentations 4:8
a thread opens
Then Moses said to Aaron, This is it that the LORD spoke, saying, I will be sanctified in them that come near me, and before all the people I will be glorified. And Aaron held his peace.
And let the priests also, which come near to the LORD, sanctify themselves, lest the LORD break forth upon them.
from Leviticus 10:3
And he sent young men of the children of Israel, which offered burnt offerings, and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the LORD.
from Exodus 19:22
And Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, took a burnt offering and sacrifices for God: and Aaron came, and all the elders of Israel, to eat bread with Moses’ father-in-law before God.
from Exodus 24:5
And there you shall eat before the LORD your God, and you shall rejoice in all that you put your hand to, you and your households, in which the LORD your God has blessed you.
from Exodus 18:12
And you shall take you on the first day the boughs of fine trees, branches of palm trees, and the boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook; and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God seven days.
from Deuteronomy 12:7 · a strong link
And you shall rejoice in your feast, you, and your son, and your daughter, and your manservant, and your maidservant, and the Levite, the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, that are within your gates.
from Leviticus 23:40
a thread opens
Now to him that is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy,
Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant,
from Jude 1:24
Whom God has raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be held of it.
from Hebrews 13:20 · a strong link
That if you shall confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and shall believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you shall be saved.
from Acts 2:24
These words spoke his parents, because they feared the Jews: for the Jews had agreed already, that if any man did confess that he was Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue.
from Romans 10:9
Blessed are you, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake.
from John 9:22
a thread opens
Woe to them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the rebellion of Korah.
And in process of time it happened, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering to the LORD.
from Jude 1:11
All the best of the oil, and all the best of the wine, and of the wheat, the firstfruits of them which they shall offer to the LORD, them have I given you.
from Genesis 4:3
The first of the firstfruits of your land you shall bring into the house of the LORD your God. You shall not boil a young goat in his mother’s milk.
from Numbers 18:12
That you shall take of the first of all the fruit of the earth, which you shall bring of your land that the LORD your God gives you, and shall put it in a basket, and shall go to the place which the LORD your God shall choose to place his name there.
from Exodus 23:19
a thread opens
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.
from Luke 2:14 · a strong link
The way of peace they know not; and there is no judgment in their goings: they have made them crooked paths: whoever goes into it shall not know peace.
from Luke 1:79
But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.
from Isaiah 59:8
a thread opens
And shall not God give justice to his own elect, which cry day and night to him, though he bear long with them?
Now she that is a widow indeed, and desolate, trusts in God, and continues in supplications and prayers night and day.
from Luke 18:7
For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection to their own husbands:
from I Timothy 5:5
The older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things;
from I Peter 3:5
Even so must their wives be grave, not slanderers, sober, faithful in all things.
from Titus 2:3 · a strong link
An overseer then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, given to hospitality, apt to teach;
from I Timothy 3:11
Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
from I Timothy 3:2
a thread opens
If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brothers, and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.
But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear to myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God.
from Luke 14:26 · a strong link
And now, brothers, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified.
from Acts 20:24
And when they had ordained them elders in every church, and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord, on whom they believed.
from Acts 20:32 · a strong link
And from Miletus he sent to Ephesus, and called the elders of the church.
from Acts 14:23
Which also they did, and sent it to the elders by the hands of Barnabas and Saul.
from Acts 20:17 · a strong link
That is the whole thread.
Every verse the cross-references reach from Psalms 119:83 along this chain. Today’s own vigil is laid separately.
Each verse follows the one before it along the chain a study Bible draws — a century old, public, and compiled by people arguing about Scripture rather than about how long you stay. Every card says which verse it came from and opens the chapter it belongs to. Today’s vigil is the same for every reader and is worked out from the date alone, so there is no account, no counter, and nothing stored in your browser or ours.
The text is the Lantern Modern Standard. The links are openbible.info’s cross-reference set (CC BY), the same apparatus behind the reader’s Echoes drawer. Read a whole book · Today’s table