¹⁹ O Lord, my cry goes up to you: for fire has put an end to the grass-lands of the waste, and all the trees of the field are burned with its flame.

¹⁰ Give yourselves to weeping, crying out in sorrow for the mountains; and for the fields of the waste land send up a song of grief, because they are burned up, so that no one goes through; there is no sound of cattle; the bird of the heavens and the beast are in flight and are gone.

¹⁵ Let your voice come up to me in the day of trouble; I will be your saviour, so that you may give glory to me.

⁴ This is what the Lord let me see: and I saw that the Lord God sent for a great fire to be the instrument of his punishment; and, after burning up the great deep, it was about to put an end to the Lord's heritage.

⁷ But as for me, I am looking to the Lord; I am waiting for the God of my salvation: the ears of my God will be open to me.

⁶ Have no cares; but in everything with prayer and praise put your requests before God.

⁷ And the peace of God, which is deeper than all knowledge, will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

⁷ And will not God do right in the cause of his saints, whose cries come day and night to his ears, though he is long in doing it?

¹ And he made a story for them, the point of which was that men were to go on making prayer and not get tired;

¹⁷ For though the fig-tree has no flowers, and there is no fruit on the vine, and work on the olive comes to nothing, and the fields give no food; and the flock is cut off from its resting-place, and there is no herd in the cattle-house:

¹⁸ Still, I will be glad in the Lord, my joy will be in the God of my salvation.

³ Before them fire sends destruction, and after them flame is burning: the land is like the garden of Eden before them, and after them an unpeopled waste; truly, nothing has been kept safe from them.

¹⁵ When his cry comes up to me, I will give him an answer: I will be with him in trouble; I will make him free from danger and give him honour.