Dual Panel1"I can't stand my life--I hate it!--I'm putting it all out on the table, all the bitterness of my life--I'm holding back nothing."
2Job prayed: "Here's what I want to say: Don't, God, bring in a verdict of guilty without letting me know the charges you're bringing.
3How does this fit into what you once called 'good'--giving me a hard time, spurning me, a life you shaped by your very own hands, and then blessing the plots of the wicked?
4You don't look at things the way we mortals do. You're not taken in by appearances, are you?
5Unlike us, you're not working against a deadline. You have all eternity to work things out.
6So what's this all about, anyway--this compulsion to dig up some dirt, to find some skeleton in my closet?
7You know good and well I'm not guilty. You also know no one can help me.
8"You made me like a handcrafted piece of pottery--and now are you going to smash me to pieces?
9Don't you remember how beautifully you worked my clay? Will you reduce me now to a mud pie?
10Oh, that marvel of conception as you stirred together semen and ovum--
11What a miracle of skin and bone, muscle and brain!
12You gave me life itself, and incredible love. You watched and guarded every breath I took.
13"But you never told me about this part. I should have known that there was more to it--
14That if I so much as missed a step, you'd notice and pounce, wouldn't let me get by with a thing.
15If I'm truly guilty, I'm doomed. But if I'm innocent, it's no better--I'm still doomed. My belly is full of bitterness. I'm up to my ears in a swamp of affliction.
16I try to make the best of it, try to brave it out, but you're too much for me, relentless, like a lion on the prowl.
17You line up fresh witnesses against me. You compound your anger and pile on the grief and pain!
18"So why did you have me born? I wish no one had ever laid eyes on me!
19I wish I'd never lived--a stillborn, buried without ever having breathed.
20Isn't it time to call it quits on my life? Can't you let up, and let me smile just once
21Before I die and am buried, before I'm nailed into my coffin, sealed in the ground,
22And banished for good to the land of the dead, blind in the final dark?"