The passages we keep returning to

Psalm 23

The shepherd psalm — six verses that have walked beside more grief, more weddings, more bedside prayers than any other in scripture.

Psalm 91

A psalm of refuge — for nights when the world feels louder than your faith.

1 Corinthians 13 — The Love Chapter

Paul's hymn to love — read at weddings, but written to a divided church about how to live together.

The Lord's Prayer

The prayer Jesus taught his disciples when they asked him how to pray.

The Beatitudes

Jesus opens the Sermon on the Mount by upending who gets called blessed.

Romans 8 — Nothing Can Separate Us

Paul's defiant assurance: there is no place outside the reach of God's love.

Proverbs 31 — A Woman of Noble Character

The closing portrait of Proverbs — strength, wisdom, kindness, and the fear of the LORD.

Isaiah 40 — They Shall Mount Up With Wings

A word for the weary — the everlasting God does not faint.

John 3:16-21 — For God So Loved the World

The most quoted six verses in scripture — God's love, the world's rescue, and the light that judges what we love most.

Hebrews 11 — The Hall of Faith

A roll call of the faithful from Abel to the prophets — each one trusting God for what they could not yet see.

Isaiah 53 — The Suffering Servant

Seven hundred years before the cross, Isaiah saw a servant despised, pierced, and bearing the iniquity of us all.

Matthew 11:28-30 — Come to Me, All Who Are Weary

Three verses Jesus addressed to the tired — a yoke that is easy, a burden that is light, and rest for the soul.

Philippians 4:4-9 — Rejoice in the Lord Always

Paul, writing from prison, hands the church the antidote to anxiety: prayer, thanksgiving, and the peace that guards.

Ephesians 6:10-18 — The Armor of God

Truth, righteousness, the gospel of peace, faith, salvation, and the word of God — the whole armor for the day of evil.

Psalm 46 — God Is Our Refuge and Strength

The psalm behind Luther's 'A Mighty Fortress' — when mountains shake and nations rage, be still and know.

Genesis 1 — In the Beginning

The Bible's opening chapter — a measured, repeating refrain in which God speaks creation into being and calls it good.

Ecclesiastes 3 — A Time for Every Purpose

A time to be born and a time to die — the Preacher's poem on the seasons of human life under heaven.

John 14 — In My Father's House Are Many Rooms

Jesus' farewell discourse — the way, the truth, the life, the promise of the Spirit, and a peace the world cannot give.

Revelation 21 — A New Heaven and a New Earth

The Bible's closing vision — God dwelling with his people, every tear wiped away, and all things made new.