O LORD, you have always been our home. Before you created the hills or brought the world into being, you were eternally God, and will be God forever. You tell man to return to what he was; you change him back to dust. A thousand years to you are like one day; they are like yesterday, already gone, like a short hour in the night. You carry us away like a flood; we last no longer than a dream. We are like weeds that sprout in the morning, that grow and burst into bloom, then dry up and die in the evening.

We are destroyed by your anger; we are terrified by your fury. You place our sins before you, our secret sins where you can see them.

Our life is cut short by your anger; it fades away like a whisper. Seventy years is all we have - eighty years, if we are strong; yet all they bring us is trouble and sorrow; life is soon over, and we are gone.