Teach Us to Number our Days: A Meditation on Psalm 90

Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.

Before the mountains were brought forth,

or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world,

even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.

 

Thou turnest man to destruction;

and sayest, Return, ye children of men.

For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past,

and as a watch in the night.

Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as asleep:

in the morning they are like grass which groweth up.

In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up;

 in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.

For we are consumed by thine anger,

and by thy wrath are we troubled.

Thou hast set our iniquities before thee,

our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.

For all our days are passed away in thy wrath:

we spend our years as a tale that is told.

The days of our years are threescore years and ten;

and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years,

yet is their strength labour and sorrow;

for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

Who knoweth the power of thine anger?

 even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.

 

So teach us to number our days,

that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

Return, O Lord, how long?

and let it repent thee concerning thy servants.

O satisfy us early with thy mercy;

that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us,

and the years wherein we have seen evil.

Let thy work appear unto thy servants,

and thy glory unto their children.

And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us:

and establish thou the work of our hands upon us;

yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.

 

The Psalmist, after calling to remembrance the eternality of God, His presence as the everlasting home of His people, the righteous judgment of God upon a sinful humanity, and the fleeting nature of all life in this world, asks of the Lord to teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.  It is a Psalm of both Law and Gospel, which opens and closes with a faithful trust in God’s providence and grace for His people even in the light of present calamity.

 

To number our days in this Hebrew idiom, is to count them, be conscious of them, and remember that our days in this world are limited.  If a normal life span is somewhere between 70 and 80 years (oddly enough it hasn’t changed much since around 1000 BC when David was penning the Psalms for the ancient Israelites, as the last century’s slavish pursuit of science and technology still has the average American lifespan around 78 years) then there are only so many days given to us to use in this present world.  To the very young, 70 or 80 years of life seems like an eternity, but as age presses upon each of us, the awareness of the temporal nature of our present life becomes more and more clear.  A year may seem very long to a 14 year old waiting anxiously to drive at 16, to be independent at 18, or to drink in the pubs at 21, where the appeal of some future opportunity makes the time feel slow to arrive.  And then, somewhere in our 20’s or 30’s, people become aware that they are no longer children, their bodies don’t quite heal as fast as they used to, and even the most fit struggle harder to keep their athletic physique.  By our 40’s and 50’s we’re becoming even more aware of how the choices and blessings of our younger years make inescapable the consequences of years ahead, with more visits to doctors, more concerns about retirement savings, and the looming time of frailty we know will eventually part us from our more arduous labors.  We become increasingly aware, as we watch other friends, family, and associates die before us, that making it to 70 or 80 years of age is a gracious blessing not afforded to all, and the closer we get to those ages, the more we wonder when our days will be finished.  Unlike the anxiousness of youth which makes time seem to crawl through those early years, every year after seems to flow with increasing speed and urgency, no matter how we might want to delay it.

 

Yet of course, our lives are not lived in a vacuum.  We live our lives in the presence of others living theirs, all in the same world the Lord has blessed us to occupy—a world we have caused to be full of trouble and heartache.  Regardless of the plans we may think so solid in our youth, the countless variables of our times and places intersected by the times and places of everyone around us, make our future days truly known only to God.  All lives are marked by some kind of struggle in body, mind, and spirit, as the sinfulness which dwells so deep in our own persons works out in greater and lesser ways in our homes, communities, and nations.  There’s a clamorous rising and falling of people, which in our individuality, reflects forward into all our professional, political, and family associations, making the world a seemingly crazy place where both blessings and judgment surround everyone.  This cacophony stymies the philosopher and the mystic, the scientist and the researcher, the leaders of industries and the craftsmen of trades, because only God can see the threads of history woven into their ultimate tapestry, and only He can guide the loom to weave it.  He alone is the author of life, the judge of sin, and the savior of all who trust in Him.  Yet within the maelstrom which is life in this fallen world, it is easy to forget the goodness of God as our beginning our and end, to set our eyes in despair upon the tumultuous waves, rather than upon Him who has created the sea and the dry land, and every living creature upon or within them.

 

The Psalmist calls the people of God to number their days, not out of fear for the calamity of unpredictable life, but in light of the goodness and graciousness of our God and Savior who gives, restores, sustains, and preserves our life eternally with Him.  As the length of our days impress upon our fallen minds the deadly consequences of our sin, both individually and across the whole human race, the grace of God in Jesus Christ calls us to trust instead upon His goodness, mercy, and love.  We have not created ourselves, and though we can use our will to either good or evil ends through faith or unbelief, we are not the ultimate authors of our own destiny.  Into this span of years, however long they may be for each of us, the Lord of Glory speaks His Everlasting Gospel to every soul, desiring that each may come to faith and repentance, life and salvation in Jesus.  Only in Him are our sins forgiven, our lives restored, and meaning once again infused into the days of our earthly pilgrimage no matter the storms which come.

 

And with this miracle of redemption before our eyes, we learn to see the Wisdom that our lives aren’t really constrained to those 70 or 80 years, after all.  While the world’s tempests and despots rage, while forces ignorant and malignant strive in vainglorious rebellion against heaven and earth, those who know the Wisdom of Jesus’ Gospel see that their lives begin in God and are preserved in God forever.  Thus we number our days not out of fear of judgment, but in the loving knowledge that we are blessed to labor in the Lord’s world for only these brief years, before we are blessed with an eternity of fulfilment and completion in Him, gathered together in the communion of the saints in light perpetual.  It is fear that counts our days afraid to lose them, but the perfect love of God in Jesus Christ casts out such fear, because the grace of His saving Gospel won through His Cross overwhelms all righteous judgment according to the Law.  We are a people alive today, and alive every day throughout all generations, for Jesus’ sake.

 

And so, may the Lord of life teach us to number our days, to count them all joy no matter what trials and tribulations may come, because we have been taught the Wisdom of Jesus which overcomes our fear, our struggle, our sin, and our death.  Let the beauty of the Lord be upon us, that the work of His crucified hands may be established within, upon, and among us, and that with all generations of the faithful from before the foundation of the world, He may be our dwelling place forever. Amen.