Scripture passages of Encouragement

2 Samuel 22:2-51 (Common English Bible) see also Psalm 18

2b The Lord is my solid rock, my fortress, my rescuer.
3 My God is my rock—I take refuge in him!—
     he’s my shield and my salvation’s strength,
     my place of safety and my shelter.
     My savior! Save me from violence!
4 Because he is praiseworthy,
     I cried out to the Lord,
     and I was saved from my enemies.
5 Death’s waves were all around me;
     rivers of wickedness terrified me.
6 The cords of the grave surrounded me;
     death’s traps held me tight.
7 In my distress I cried out to the Lord;
     I cried out to my God.
God heard my voice from his temple;
     my cry for help reached his ears.

8 The earth rocked and shook;
     the sky’s foundations trembled
     and reeled because of God’s anger.
9 Smoke went up from God’s nostrils;
     out of his mouth came a devouring fire;
     flaming coals blazed out in front of him!
10 God parted the skies and came down;
     thick darkness was beneath his feet.
11 God mounted the heavenly creatures and flew;
     he was seen on the wind’s wings.
12 God made darkness his covering;
     water gathered in dense clouds!
13 Coals of fire blazed out of the brightness before him.
14 The Lord thundered from heaven;
     the Most High made his voice heard.
15 God shot arrows, scattering the enemy;
     he sent the lightning and whipped them into confusion.
16 The seabeds were exposed;
     the earth’s foundations were laid bare at the Lord’s rebuke,
          at the angry blast of air coming from his nostrils.

17 From on high God reached down and grabbed me;
     he took me out of deep waters.
18 God saved me from my powerful enemy,
     saved me from my foes, who were too much for me.
19 They came at me on the very day of my distress,
     but the Lord was my support.
20 He brought me out to wide-open spaces;
     he pulled me out, because he is pleased with me.
21 The Lord rewarded me for my righteousness;
     he restored me because my hands are clean,
22 because I have kept the Lord’s ways.
     I haven’t acted wickedly against my God.
23 All his rules are right in front of me;
     I haven’t turned away from any of his laws.
24 I have lived with integrity before him;
     I’ve kept myself from wrongdoing.
25 And so the Lord restored me for my righteousness,
     because I am clean in his eyes.

26 You deal faithfully with the faithful;
     you show integrity toward the one who has integrity.
27 You are pure toward the pure,
     but toward the crooked, you are tricky.
28 You are the one who saves people who suffer,
     but your eyes are against the proud.
     You bring them down!
29 You are my lamp, Lord;
     the Lord illumines my darkness.
30 With you I can charge into battle;
     with my God I can leap over a wall.
31 God! His way is perfect;
     the Lord’s word is tried and true.
He is a shield for all who take refuge in him.
     
32 Now really, who is divine except the Lord?
     And who is a rock except our God?
33 Only God! My mighty fortress,
     who makes my way perfect,
34 who makes my step as sure as the deer’s,
     who lets me stand securely on the heights,
35 who trains my hands for war
     so my arms can bend a bronze bow.
36 You’ve given me the shield of your salvation;
     your help has made me great.
37 You’ve let me walk fast and safe,
     without even twisting an ankle.
38 I chased my enemies and destroyed them!
     I didn’t come home until I finished them off.
39 I ate them up! I struck them down!
     They couldn’t get up;
          they fell under my feet.

40 You equipped me with strength for war;
     you brought my adversaries down underneath me.
41 You made my enemies turn tail from me;
     I destroyed my foes.
42 They looked around, but there was no one to save them.
     They looked to the Lord, but he wouldn’t answer them.
43 I crushed them like dust on the ground;
     I stomped on them, trampled them like mud dumped in the streets.
44 You delivered me from struggles with many people;
     you appointed me the leader of many nations.
     Strangers come to serve me.
45 Foreigners grovel before me;
     after hearing about me, they obey me.
46 Foreigners lose their nerve;
     they come trembling out of their fortresses.[e]

47 The Lord lives! Bless God, my rock!
     Let my God, the rock of my salvation, be lifted high!
48 This is the God who avenges on my behalf,
     who subdues peoples before me,
49 who rescues me from my enemies.
You lifted me high above my adversaries;
     you delivered me from violent people.
50 That’s why I thank you, Lord, in the presence of the nations.
     That’s why I sing praises to your name.
51 You are the one who gives great victories to your king,
     who shows faithful love to your anointed one—
     to David and to his descendants forever.

Psalm 18 (Common English Bible, adapted) see also 2 Samuel 22 above
1 I love you, Lord, my strength.
2 The Lord is my solid rock,
     my fortress, my rescuer.
My God is my rock—
I take refuge in God!—
     you are my shield,
     my salvation’s strength,
     my place of safety.
3 Because God is praiseworthy,
     I cried out to the Lord,
     and I was saved from my enemies.
4 Death’s cords were wrapped around me;
     rivers of wickedness terrified me.
5 The cords of the grave surrounded me;
     death’s traps held me tight.
6 In my distress I cried out to the Lord;
     I called to my God for help.
God heard my voice from his temple;
     I called to him for help, and my call reached his ears.

7 The earth rocked and shook;
     the bases of the mountains trembled and reeled

     because of God’s anger.
8 Smoke went up from God’s nostrils;
     out of his mouth came a devouring fire;
     flaming coals blazed out in front of God!
9 God parted the skies and came down;
     thick darkness was beneath God's feet.
10 God mounted the heavenly creatures and flew;
     God soared on the wings of the wind.
11 God made darkness cloak him;
     God's covering was dark water and dense cloud.
12 God’s clouds went ahead of the brightness before God;
     hail and coals of fire went too.
13 The Lord thundered in heaven;
     the Most High's voice was heard with hail and coals of fire.
14 God shot arrows, scattering the enemy;
     God sent the lightning and threw them into confusion.
15 The seabeds were exposed;
     the earth’s foundations were laid bare at your rebuke, Lord,
     at the angry blast of air coming from your nostrils.

16 From on high God reached down and grabbed me;
     God took me out of all that water.
17 God saved me from my powerful enemy,
     saved me from my foes, who were too much for me.
18 They came at me on the very day of my distress,
     but the Lord was my support.
19 God brought me out to wide-open spaces;
     god pulled me out safe because he is pleased with me.
20 The Lord rewarded me for my righteousness;
     God restored me because my hands are clean,
21 because I have kept the Lord’s ways.
     I haven’t acted wickedly against my God.
22 All God's rules are right in front of me;
     I haven’t turned away from any of God's laws.
23 I have lived with integrity before God;
     I’ve kept myself from wrongdoing.
24 And so the Lord restored me for my righteousness
     because my hands are clean in God's eyes.

25 You deal faithfully with the faithful;
     you show integrity toward the one who has integrity.
26 You are pure toward the pure,
     but toward the crooked, you are tricky.
27 You are the one who saves people who suffer
     and brings down those with proud eyes.
28 You are the one who lights my lamp—
     the Lord my God illumines my darkness.
29 With you I can charge into battle;
     with my God I can leap over a wall.
30 God! Your way is perfect;
     the Lord’s word is tried and true.
you are a shield for all who take refuge in you.

31 Now really, who is divine except the Lord?
     And who is a rock but our God?
32 Only God! The God who equips me with strength
     and makes my way perfect,
33 who makes my step as sure as the deer’s,
     who lets me stand securely on the heights,
34 who trains my hands for war
     so my arms can bend a bronze bow.
35 You’ve given me the shield of your salvation;
     your strong hand has supported me;
     your help has made me great.
36 You’ve let me walk fast and safe,
     without even twisting an ankle.
37 I chased my enemies and caught them!
     I didn’t come home until I finished them off.
38 I struck them down;
     they couldn’t get up again;
     they fell under my feet.
39 You equipped me with strength for war;
     you brought my adversaries down underneath me.
40 You made my enemies turn tail from me;
     I destroyed my foes.
41 They cried for help,
     but there was no one to save them.
They cried for help to the Lord,
     but he wouldn’t answer them.
42 I crushed them like dust blown away by the wind;
     I threw them out like mud dumped in the streets.
43 You delivered me from struggles with many people;
     you appointed me the leader of many nations.
          Strangers come to serve me.

44 After hearing about me, they obey me;
     foreigners grovel before me.
45 Foreigners lose their nerve;
     they come trembling out of their fortresses.

46 The Lord lives! Bless God, my rock!
     Let the God of my salvation be lifted high!
47 This is the God who avenges on my behalf,
     who subdues people before me,
48 who delivers me from my enemies.
Yes, you lifted me high above my adversaries;
     you delivered me from violent people.
49 That’s why I thank you, Lord, in the presence of the nations.
     That’s why I sing praises to your name.
50 You are the one who gives great victories to your king,
     who shows faithful love to your anointed one—
     to David and to his descendants forever.


Psalm 139:1-18 (Common English Bible)

1 Lord, you have examined me.
     You know me.
2 You know when I sit down and when I stand up.
     Even from far away, you comprehend my plans.
3 You study my traveling and resting.
     You are thoroughly familiar with all my ways.
4 There isn’t a word on my tongue, Lord,
     that you don’t already know completely.
5 You surround me—front and back.
     You put your hand on me.
6 That kind of knowledge is too much for me;
     it’s so high above me that I can’t reach it.

7 Where could I go to get away from your spirit?
     Where could I go to escape your presence?
8 If I went up to heaven, you would be there.
     If I went down to the grave,[a] you would be there too!
9 If I could fly on the wings of dawn,
     stopping to rest only on the far side of the ocean—
10 even there your hand would guide me;
     even there your strong hand would hold me tight!
11 If I said, “The darkness will definitely hide me;
     the light will become night around me,”
12 even then the darkness isn’t too dark for you!
     Nighttime would shine bright as day,
     because darkness is the same as light to you!

13 You are the one who created my innermost parts;
     you knit me together while I was still in my mother’s womb.
14 I give thanks to you that I was marvelously set apart.
     Your works are wonderful—I know that very well.
15 My bones weren’t hidden from you
     when I was being put together in a secret place,
     when I was being woven together in the deep parts of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my embryo,
     and on your scroll every day was written

      that was being formed for me,
     before any one of them had yet happened.
17 God, your plans are incomprehensible to me!
     Their total number is countless!
18 If I tried to count them—they outnumber grains of sand!
     If I came to the very end—I’d still be with you.

Psalm 46 (Common English Bible, adapted)

1 God is our refuge and strength,
     a help always near in times of great trouble.
2 That’s why we won’t be afraid when the world falls apart,
     when the mountains crumble into the center of the sea,
3 when its waters roar and rage,
     when the mountains shake because of its surging waves. Selah

4 There is a river whose streams gladden God’s city,
     the holiest dwelling of the Most High.
5 God is in that city. It will never crumble.
     God will help it when morning dawns.
6 Nations roar; kingdoms crumble.
     God utters his voice; the earth melts.
7 The Lord of heavenly forces is with us!
     The God of Jacob is our place of safety.                          Selah

8 Come, see the Lord’s deeds,
     what devastation he has imposed on the earth—
9 bringing wars to an end in every corner of the world,
     breaking the bow and shattering the spear,
          burning chariots with fire.

10 “That’s enough! Now know that I am God!
     I am exalted among all nations; I am exalted throughout the world!”

11 The Lord of heavenly forces is with us!
     The God of Jacob is our place of safety.                        Selah

Isaiah 41:10 (Common English Bible)

Don't fear, because I am with you;

     don't be afraid, for I am your God.

     I will strengthen you,

     I will surely help you;

     I will hold you with my righteous strong hand.

Isaiah 41:26-31 (Common English Bible, adapted)
Look up at the sky and consider:
     Who created these?
The one who brings out their attendants one by one
     summoning each of them by name.
Because of God's great strength
     and mighty power, not one is missing.
Why do you say, Jacob, and declare, Israel,
     "My way is hidden from the LORD,
     my God ignores my predicament?"
Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard?
     The LORD is the everlasting God,
     the creator of the ends of the earth.
     God doesn’t grow tired or weary.
God's understanding is beyond human reach,
     giving power to the tired
     and reviving the exhausted.
Youths will become tired and weary,
     young people will certainly stumble;
     but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength;
     they will fly up on wings like eagles;
     they will run and not be tired;
     they will walk and not be weary.

Isaiah 43:1b-3a (Common English Bible)

Don’t fear, for I have redeemed you;
     I have called you by name; you are mine.
2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
     when through the rivers, they won’t sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire, you won’t be scorched
     and flame won’t burn you.
3 I am the Lord your God,
     the holy one of Israel, your savior.

Junius Childbirth Charm (Medieval)

The Virgin Mary gave birth to Christ. The infertile Elizabeth gave birth to John the Baptist. I urge you, child, whether you are male or female, but the Father and the Son and the holy Spirit, to come out and move beyond. Mat you not harm the child or make him foolish. Amen. The Lord, seeing the wailing sisters of Lazarus, wept in front of the tomb. In the presence of the Jews, he exclaimed, "Lazarus, come out!" And he who had been dead for four days came out with his hands and feet bound.

Write this in wax which has never been worked on and bind it under her right foot.

--Anonymous, English and Latin text, 11th century, translated by Runqi Zhang. Found at the Global Medieval Sourcebook: A Digital Repository of Medieval Texts, at Stanford University.

From the introduction:

"Childbirth in medieval Europe was often the most dangerous experience of a woman's life. Because of poor hygiene and a lack of gynecological knowledge, scholars have estimated that as many as ten percent of women died during childbirth or immediately afterwards. Not only did mothers die in large numbers, but as many as thirty percent of children died in the process of childbirth. In the face of these dangers, medieval people used a wide variety of charms and prayers in an attempt to improve their chances of a successful delivery.

The charm presented here was composed in England in the eleventh century CE and is an example of a “peperit charm”. The name comes from the Latin word peperit (“gave birth to”). This word occurs frequently in these charms, because they list the biblical women who gave birth to children. Indeed, a peperit charm can be identified by its sequence of holy mothers, one of the most widespread motifs in medieval childbirth charms. Typically, as is the case here, a peperit charm will invoke the names of holy mothers one by one. Some examples will contain other formulations, whether to add to the functions to the charm or to enhance its effects. This charm contains three additional features that can be found in other childbirth charms: an appeal to the unborn child to leave the womb; the account of Lazarus’s resurrection with its climactic words, “Lazarus, come forth!”; instructions for how to turn the prayer into an amulet that the laboring woman can wear on her body.

In the case of the Junius Peperit Charm, the instructions for turning the prayer into an amulet state that the charm should be written on wax that has never been used before and bound to the woman’s right foot. The requirement for unworked wax (also known as “virgin” wax) is interesting, seeming to emphasize the sacramental quality of the prayer. The instruction to attach the prayer to the pregnant woman's body suggests that there was a hope that she could connect with its content in an embodied way, drawing on its power to support her own body during childbirth.

In comparison to childbirth prayers, an example of which is presented in this collection https://sourcebook.stanford.edu/text/marston-childbirth-prayer, this charm has minimal narrative content, focusing instead on the invocation of biblical names. It is quite possible that this charm, or at least the first part of it, would have been repeatedly chanted during a woman's labor. Hearing the familiar names of biblical mothers might have served to calm and encourage the laboring woman, reassuring her that she too could deliver her child safely.

Citation: Anonymous. "Junius Childbirth Charm." Trans. Runqi Zhang. Global Medieval Sourcebook. http://sourcebook.stanford.edu/text/junius-childbirth-charm. Retrieved on August 1, 2023.

Parturition

I am the centre
Of a circle of pain
Exceeding its boundaries in every direction

The business of the bland sun
Has no affair with me
In my congested cosmos of agony
From which there is no escape
On infinitely prolonged nerve-vibrations
Or in contraction
To the pinpoint nucleus of being

Locate an irritation              without
It is                                              within
                                                       Within
It is without
The sensitized area
Is identical                with the extensity
Of intension

I am the false quantity
In the harmony of physiological potentiality
To which
Gaining self-control
I should be consonant
In time

Pain is no stronger than the resisting force
Pain calls up in me
The struggle is equal

The open window is full of a voice
A fashionable portrait painter
Running upstairs to a woman’s apartment
Sings
          “All the girls are tid’ly did’ly
          All the girls are nice
          Whether they wear their hair in curls
          Or —”
At the back of the thoughts to which I permit crystallization
The conception                        Brute
Why?
         The irresponsibility of the male
Leaves woman her superior Inferiority.
He is running upstairs

I am climbing a distorted mountain of agony
Incidentally with the exhaustion of control
I reach the summit
And gradually subside into anticipation of

Repose
Which never comes.
For another mountain is growing up
Which goaded by the unavoidable
I must traverse
Traversing myself

Something in the delirium of night hours
Confuses while intensifying sensibility
Blurring spatial contours
So aiding elusion of the circumscribed
That the gurgling of a crucified wild beast
Comes from so far away
And the foam on the stretched muscles of a mouth
Is no part of myself
There is a climax in sensibility
When pain surpassing itself
Becomes exotic
And the ego succeeds in unifying the positive and negative poles of sensation
Uniting the opposing and resisting forces
In lascivious revelation

Relaxation
Negation of myself as a unit
Vacuum interlude
I should have been emptied of life
Giving life

For consciousness in crises            races
Through the subliminal deposits of evolutionary processes

Have I not
Somewhere
Scrutinized
A dead white feathered moth
Laying eggs?
A moment
Being realization
Can
Vitalized by cosmic initiation
Furnish an adequate apology
For the objective
Agglomeration of activities
Of a life
LIFE
A leap with nature
Into the essence
Of unpredicted Maternity
Against my thigh
Tough of infinitesimal motion
Scarcely perceptible
Undulation
Warmth              moisture
Stir of incipient life
Precipitating into me

The contents of the universe
Mother I am
Identical
     With infinite Maternity
     Indivisible
     Acutely
     I am absorbed
     Into
The was—is—ever—shall—be
Of cosmic reproductivity

Rises from the subconscious
Impression of a cat
With blind kittens
Among her legs
Same undulating life-stir
I am that cat

Rises from the sub-conscious
Impression of small animal carcass
Covered with blue bottles
—Epicurean—
And through the insects
Waves that same undulation of living
Death
Life
I am knowing
All about


     Unfolding


The next morning
Each woman-of-the-people
Tiptoeing the red pile of the carpet
Doing hushed service
Each woman-of-the-people
Wearing a halo
A ludicrous little halo
Of which she is sublimely unaware

I once heard in a church
—Man and woman God made them—
                                                         Thank God.

-- Mina Loy (1882-1966), radical British painter and Futurist poet, written in 1914.

Image: Motherhood, by Dorothea Tanning (surrealist), oil on canvas, 1947

On the Adoption of Sons: An Anniversary

I stand and watch them, feeling awkward and glad
Like any supernumerary Joseph.
They both are kneeling, the woman and the child,
Their heads together. The closed window makes me
         deaf

But I can see them talking over the bud
Or bug in the summer grass. I watch and love her
For the son I love but never gave her.
She carried him in her prophetic blood

Through ages. And I too suffered the love she suffered
For all the children in all the strangers' houses.
I ached with her meek envy of the mothered
World. And still the little outcast Moses

Lay hidden until one day our telephone
Rang bells from a distant city and sudden flesh
Was made of abstract faith. There we shone
With alarming haloes, standing inside the crèche

And trembling before the baby whose large brown eyes
Accused our ignorance by what he understood.
We saw and marvelled how fingers of this toy-size
Could bless all children with crosses of brotherhood.

Our lilting Ford escaped the city of signs
And fearful joys, and swung him with us home
To Nazareth. But always, always shines
In our known street and house that Bethlehem.

Of course this story, our story, is travesty
And passers-by may joke in fun or guile.
But when we look at them, the authentic three,
They are not laughing, not frowning; we see them
         smile.




--Ernest Sandeen (1909-1997), poet and professor at the University of Notre Dame, from Poetry magazine, February 1955

To Our Miscarried One, Age Thirty Now

Though I never saw you, only your clouds,

I was afraid of you, of how you differed
from what we had wanted you to be. And it's as if
you waited, then, where such waiting is done,
for when I would look beside me--and here
you are, in the world of forms, where my wifehood
is now, and every action with him,
as if a thousand years from now
you and I are in some antechamber
where the difference between us is of little matter,
you with perhaps not much of a head yet,
dear garden one, you among the shovels
and spades and wafts of beekeeper's shroud
and sky-blue kidskin gloves.
That he left me is not much, compared
to your leaving the earth--you shifting places
on it, and shifting shapes--you threw off your
working clothes of arms and legs,
and moved house, from uterus
to toilet bowl and jointed stem
and sewer out to float the rivers and
bays in painless pieces. And yet
the idea of you has come back to where
I could see you today as a small, impromptu
god of the partial. When I leave for good,
would you hold me in your blue mitt
for the departure hence. I never thought
to see you again, I never thought to seek you.

-- Sharon Olds (1942- ), American poet and professor at NYU, winner of the Pulitzer and T. S. Eliot prize for this volume, Stag's Leap, 2012.

Lullaby

The upland falls behind the house, 

live and scrub oak, barbed wire 

firmly implanted stringing unlikely 

trees together, terrace by terrace, 

down and down, white rock
gleaming through the green. 

The art of memory, they say, 

is to forget. So sleep now, 

smile and sleep and let me 

think, sleep past the molecules 

of grief, let me kneel and believe,

believe and submit. 

Soon enough you'll know hunger, 

then sweetness, then a sweet 

hunger for what reaches 

out to touch. Soon, too, 

those poor, nerveless times,

those times when you curse 

and strike out at yourself, 

when you count up wrongs 

and feed them as if they were 

one prairie fire. As I sit 

and watch you sleep,
I grow angry, too, 

at my abstraction of your sorrow, 

at its necessity, at the very idea 

of what I cannot speak,
it's so unspeakable.

So sleep and smile,
sleep deep.

--Ralph Burns (1949- ), Oklahoma-born American poet and former professor at the University of Arkansas- Little Rock, from Poetry magazine, November 1988.