I am tired, Lord. I am fed up with life. People say that life is short. To me it now looks long, eternally long. I don’t know what to do with my life. I could still live many years ahead, and I shudder at the thought of it. The burden, the routine, the boredom of it all. It is not so much the suffering I complain of now, but the sheer weariness of living. To walk the same streets again, to do the same chores again, to meet the same people, to say the same meaningless words. Is that life? And if that is life, is it worth living at all?

“Lord, let me know my end.”

It seems a dreadful prayer, and yet it is my only consolation now. Let me know my end. Let me know that this dreary existence will come to an end, that one day it will be over and there will be no more walking without aim, no more living without meaning. Let me at least know that this will not go on for ever, not for long, please; life is so painfully dull, so mercilessly repetitive.
I dread the chair on which I sit, I hate the table on which I write, I cannot bear the sight of these four walls that encompass my life and limit my existence. They speak of prisoners in jail. What does it matter whether the jail has high walls or low, so long as I don’t get out of them and they determine my daily routine with deadly efficiency! Tomorrow’s ways are the same as today’s, just as today’s were the same as yesterday’s and so on as far as my memory goes. “Making a living”, that is what they call it. Has anybody yet thought of living a living?

I am tired, Lord, and you know it. Still I feel some relief in saying it before you, not as a complaint, not even as a prayer, if you understand me, but just as a confidence, a talk between friends, a letting off steam before one who understands and wants to listen in sympathy. Mine is the wayfarer’s fatigue, and I want to sit on a stone by the wayside and forget for a moment the weariness of walking on the dusty road. I’ll keep on walking, Lord, but let me rest for a while before starting again on the dull journey. The fact that you are near will give me the strength I need to continue.

Hear my prayer, O Lord;
listen to my cry,
hold not your peace at my tears;
for I find shelter with you,
I am your guest,
as all my fathers were.

Frown on me no more
and let me smile again,