The Second Messenger

This poem requires a little bit of back story to make adequate sense. In June, 2009 I had my first directing position as Assistant to the Director in a summer production of J.B. A modern interpretation of the biblical story of Job. It was a very interesting play, and became and even more interesting production, not too mention just a little on the ambitious side, considering this was a children's theatre. Half the cast was made up of my siblings and cousins, everyone joked about it being a Daniel's production. In this play Job had only five children and they're taken from him a few at a time, rather than all at once. Every time one of them dies the news is brought to Job and his wife by the same two messengers. First they were from the army, then they were reporters, then they were policemen, etc. But they were always the same, one a demonic messenger and the second an angel. And every time the second messenger grows more and more reluctant, more and more insistent as she repeats:

"I only am alone escape to tell thee.
I who have understood nothing, have known
nothing, have been answered nothing..."

Why was it I who had to tell him
Who had to make the truth be known?
Why did I have to see her face,
The mother stripped of all she’d born?

I don’t understand. I didn’t want-
Didn’t want to see it all.
Why did you choose me, Oh Lord?
Who am I to face your call?

You weren’t there! You don’t know!
Nobody can understand.
Seeing everything you loved
Slip away…Alone…

First his sons. Then his daughters.
What more did he have to loose?
His home, his wife, at last his health
And each time I brought the news.

I watched his face, I watched his heart
As he watched them slip away.
I watched him choose and at the last
He saw the breaking of the day.

For this life is but a dream.
He knew that and he found the light.
But I still wander, lost, alone,
Blindly groping in the night.

Why was I chosen, I who knew nothing?
I who still seek the truth that he knew?
Why was I made to see all the horror,
The evil, the grief, the pain he lived through?

Was it just to see the end?
To see that God is always just?
To know that there is peace, is love,
Is mercy for all men? For us?