A Prayer of One Whose Life Is Falling to Pieces, and Who Lets God Know Just How Bad It Is

1–2  102 God, listen! Listen to my prayer,

listen to the pain in my cries.

Don’t turn your back on me

just when I need you so desperately.

Pay attention! This is a cry for help!

And hurry—this can’t wait!

3–11  I’m wasting away to nothing,

I’m burning up with fever.

I’m a ghost of my former self,

half-consumed already by terminal illness.

My jaws ache from gritting my teeth;

I’m nothing but skin and bones.

I’m like a buzzard in the desert,

a crow perched on the rubble.

Insomniac, I twitter away,

mournful as a sparrow in the gutter.

All day long my enemies taunt me,

while others just curse.

They bring in meals—casseroles of ashes!

I draw drink from a barrel of my tears.

And all because of your furious anger;

you swept me up and threw me out.

There’s nothing left of me—

a withered weed, swept clean from the path.

12–17  Yet you, God, are sovereign still,

always and ever sovereign.

You’ll get up from your throne and help Zion—

it’s time for compassionate help.

Oh, how your servants love this city’s rubble

and weep with compassion over its dust!

The godless nations will sit up and take notice

—see your glory, worship your name—

When God rebuilds Zion,

when he shows up in all his glory,

When he attends to the prayer of the wretched.

He won’t dismiss their prayer.

18–22  Write this down for the next generation

so people not yet born will praise God:

“God looked out from his high holy place;

from heaven he surveyed the earth.

He listened to the groans of the doomed,

he opened the doors of their death cells.”

Write it so the story can be told in Zion,

so God’s praise will be sung in Jerusalem’s streets

And wherever people gather together

along with their rulers to worship him.

23–28  God sovereignly brought me to my knees,

he cut me down in my prime.

“Oh, don’t,” I prayed, “please don’t let me die.

You have more years than you know what to do with!

You laid earth’s foundations a long time ago,

and handcrafted the very heavens;

You’ll still be around when they’re long gone,

threadbare and discarded like an old suit of clothes.

You’ll throw them away like a worn-out coat,

but year after year you’re as good as new.

Your servants’ children will have a good place to live

and their children will be at home with you.”