Psalms 102:3-11, 18-22

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.

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.