Do These Words of Mine in You a Smile Evoke!

This life You’ve given us here, You know it best:

Is it an examination, some greatly onerous test,

Or an enormous illusion that doesn’t actually exist

(Though we think it does, for in delusion we persist),

Or part of a grand drama that You like to stage,

Which You’ve been playing out, age after age,

Or just a meaningless and empty passing show,

Whose reality no one but You happen to know,

Or an event-filled dream that You delight to view,

That’s unreal like a mirage and is not really true,

Or a sort of movie that’s a mix of good and bad,

Laughter and sorrow, scenes both joyful and sad,

Or a mere string of moments, passage of some time,

That You make us undergo for no reason or rhyme,

Or a short holiday for us, a brief time here to dwell,

(If this is truly the case, it’s only You who can tell),

Or a very great happening, a profound mystery

That we cannot fathom in our present capacity,

Or a punishment from You, a sort of terrible curse,

Or a blip of time to pass in a random, chance universe,

Or a means for us to grow, a blessing that’s truly great,

And that will determine for us our further, eternal fate,

Or an endless cycle that’s been existing since long past,

From which hopefully we’ll be free one day, at long last,

Or something that You’ve ordered, Your royal decree,

(In choosing which You simply didn’t let us be free),

Or a rude expulsion from the comfort of a heavenly home,

Causing us here on this earthly plane to in madness roam,

Or a result of Darwinian evolution, purposeless and blind,

Whose logic, meaning and goal we simply cannot find,

Or a sort of arena for the interplay of both evil and good,

An absurd conundrum that we’ve just not understood?

Is it that You've placed us here, in this Your vast universe,

For You to express thereby some of Your attributes diverse?

Or, is it that You’ve brought us here Yourself to entertain,

And to watch us as we undergo both pleasure and pain?

Or is it that You've put us here for a lofty purpose divine,

So that during our brief stay here ourselves we’ll refine?

Or is our earthly sojourn meant to be a dreary nightmare,

Filled with much pain, about which You just don’t care?

Or are we here simply suffering for a while to tolerate,

For which later on us You'll abundantly compensate,

Or are we on Earth because You deemed this as our fate

After in Eden’s park Adam and Eve a forbidden fruit ate?

Or have You sent us here so that You can later decide

Who'll be sent to Heaven and who in Hell will reside?

Or is it that we’re here simply because that’s what is so,

And on and on in cycles, from one life to another we go?

Or is it a big secret that in Yourself You carefully conceal,

Which, when You take us back, to us You’ll finally reveal?

I could well be wrong, Lord, but is it simply a silly joke?

Please tell me if these words of mine in You a smile evoke!