“Making best use of the time we have”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Saturday, November 18, 2023
Psalm 90 (Forward, p. 20) CEV p. 611
There is something strange and rather intriguing here in this psalm. It is basically a meditation on the shortness and uncertainty of the lives of humans when compared with God and His eternity. The subscription tells us that it was composed by ‘Moses, the man of God.’ Now, is this the same Moses that led the children of Israel out of their bondage in Egypt? I ask this because the Bible tells us he died at the age of 120 years and even then ‘his eyesight was still good and his body strong” (see Deuteronomy 34:7). (This certainly was more than can be said of most of us.) That said, If this be the same man, then how can this support his words about the shortness and uncertainly of human life?
I will suggest that this conviction about the shortness and uncertainty of human life was born of experience, his own experience on two realms. Firstly, from his experiences with the Hebrew people by and large. How very few of them were still with him after their Exodus! Most had died in the Wilderness, an entire generation in fact! And it was not just one episode that ‘did them in’ or one cause. Instead, the circumstances and causes of their deaths were many and varied.
And then there was his own life, his own experience. Think of just how many times he had faced the very certain prospect of death, starting, indeed with his infancy and Pharaoh’s cruel dictate. By all rights, save for a miraculous intervention, he should have been dead from the start. And then there was the incident when he slew an Egyptian overseer in anger and he was forced to flee the country with a price upon his head. And then there were the simple circumstances of that same flight: here, with him, a pampered Egyptian, being thrust into the unforgiving, harsh and rather demanding Sinai desert. And then there was the effrontery of his showing up, a mere peasant in Pharaoh’s eyes, and an escaped fugitive from justice to boot, showing up at the court to ‘demand’, yes, to demand the release of his people. Pharaoh could have had him struck down at the very spot, and nothing more would have been heard of him. And then there were the circumstances in the wilderness ranging from the murmuring of God’s people there and the threats of stoning to the war against the Ammonites: there were so many occasions when Moses could have met his death, premature or otherwise.
So, no wonder Moses waxes eloquent about how unpredictable and how uncertain our human lives can be:
“You bring our lives to an end just like a dream. We are merely tender grass that sprouts and grows in the morning, but dries up by evening” (verses 5-6);
“We can expect seventy years, or maybe eighty, if we are healthy, but even our best years bring trouble and sorrow. Suddenly our time is up, and we disappear” (verse 10);
However, over and against this, he also goes on to describe just what God is like:
“Our God, in all our generations you have been our home. You have always been God—long before the birth of the mountains, even before you created the earth and the world” (verses 1-2);
[This has got to be nothing less than earth-shattering in terms of our
usual human thought patterns, as we tend to be either human centred, as if it all centres and depends on us, or creation centred,
as if the creation is the be all and end all. It simply boggles our
imaginations to this that God was here and active long before either
came into existence.]
“At your command we die and turn back to dust, but a thousand years mean nothing to you! They are merely a day gone by or a few hours in the night” (verses 3-4);
[Again, this boggles our imaginations, as we are so time centred and time driven, to think that anyone could be removed or independent from this constraint.]
As humbling as these realities are, there is far more in our psalmist’s words that should humble us and bring us to our knees:
a) Firstly, there is God’s wholly justified anger, an anger over our sin, our refusal to follow Him and obey Him, our determination to be our own gods and do our ‘own thing’; and should we not, in light of this,
sincerely repent, ask forgiveness and start anew, turning away from those sins, those things that so sorely grieve our Lord.
b) Secondly, there is the profound respect that we owe God. The older translations here speak of ‘the fear of the Lord’, but it is not an abject, cowering, subservient fear, but a healthy respect given who and what God is. So, instead of a sometimes flippant and careless disregard of Him, should we not treat Him with great respect and reverence.
c) Thirdly, there is a need of a thoughtful appreciation of the time that we do have and the commitment to use it wisely.
d) And finally, there is the delight we have in God, our enjoyment of Him, and our whole-hearted, wholesale trust in Him and His goodness and provision.
These four things should occupy our lives fully, our lives fully in what time we are given. Thanks be to God for whatever time that might be.
Forward Notes: “The span of our life is seventy years, perhaps in strength even eighty; yet the sum of them is but labour and sorrow, for they pass quickly and we are gone” (verse 10).
“Who wants to spend their brief, precious time in ‘labour and sorrow’? For many, one of the pandemic’s lessons was that life is short and unpredictable. In the past few years, we’ve seen marked changes in the labour force, as many people quit jobs in toxic workplaces and took their skills elsewhere. They were tired of pouring out their brief lives in workplaces where they were overworked, underpaid, bullied and exploited.
“In Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, the ghost Jacob Marley cautions a terrified Scrooge: ‘No space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity missed.’ Both Dickens and today’s psalm remind us to use our time well and to take every opportunity to do God’s will.”
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