You were good to me, LORD; you protected me like a mountain fortress. But then you hid yourself from me, and I was afraid.

Why do you avoid me? Why do you treat me like an enemy?

If God decided to do nothing at all, no one could criticize him. If he hid his face, we would be helpless.

For creation was condemned to lose its purpose, not of its own will, but because God willed it to be so. Yet there was the hope

For we know that up to the present time all of creation groans with pain, like the pain of childbirth.

When they die, they return to the dust; on that day all their plans come to an end.

If God took back the breath of life,

then everyone living would die and turn into dust again.

Our bodies will return to the dust of the earth, and the breath of life will go back to God, who gave it to us.

Nor does he need anything that we can supply by working for him, since it is he himself who gives life and breath and everything else to everyone.

You tell us to return to what we were; you change us back to dust.

You will have to work hard and sweat to make the soil produce anything, until you go back to the soil from which you were formed. You were made from soil, and you will become soil again."