Psalm 90
In the prayerbook of God’s people, every psalm begins with a subscript, a brief sentence above the psalm, attributing the words that follow to person, situation, or key moment in the ongoing saga of life. The subscripts are scriptural versions of the dedication page one might find in a book. “This book is dedicated to my parents, who believed in me from the beginning.” Or “I dedicate this book to all the dreamers of the world, who imagine a world without war.” The vast majority of psalms are attributed to David, but Psalm 90’s subscript names it as Moses’s psalm. It is the only psalm linked to Moses in the entire 150 collection.
The psalms were collected after the exile, when it made sense to idealize the years of David’s mighty kingdom. To link a psalm to Moses meant stretching one’s memory far back to life before there were nations, sanctuaries, or monarchies, when the choices were “Do we stay put in this plot of wilderness” or “Or do we gather our belongings and walk another distance into the unknown before us?” A psalm to Moses means recalling the time when life is reduced to the essentials of water, food and shelter and the people of God are a ragged band of pilgrims, struggling their way toward a yet-to-be-fulfilled promise. We might add a modern-day subscript beneath Moses’s name to suggest others on a stark journey: For Amanda, whose cancer treatments have rendered her unable to eat, longing for soft bedding, and counting the weeks between infusions. For Joey, who left town today, putting distance between the wreckage of his past and his hopes for a better future. For all of us, who want to remember what we once knew before bills, calendars, jobs, and a lifetime of hurts piled up within us.
What does the psalm first proclaim? God is an everlasting God. Whatever the season, year, decade, or millennia, whatever the headlines, or the heartache, God still is.
And whatever the season, the year, the decade, whatever our skills, experiences, or knowledge, we are not God. We have not created the earth nor have we called other creatures into being. We will not last forever. These two truths co-exist. God is an everlasting God, for whom a thousand years is like a day and human life is short, limited by time and ability. We are like the grass that is fresh green in the morning but withers in the scorching afternoon sun. We are alive today; dust tomorrow. God endures. Between divine eternity and human limitation a gap exists, a space opens for sin and suffering to enter.
As Moses led the people through the desert they rebelled against his leadership. The sea is too deep. The bread tastes different. There is NO water. Sure, you provided for us yesterday, Moses, but today is another day. The rebellious distrust reached its climax when the people fashioned the golden calf, ignoring the fact that Moses meeting with God on their behalf. The middle portion of Psalm 90 speaks to this part of the story. “You, God, have set our sins before us. By your wrath we are overwhelmed.” This rebellious rupture renders even Moses unable to enter the Promised Land. A sign, one scholar says of how “We always come up short. We do not have enough time, good intentions, or accomplishments” to compensate for our failures, frailties, and fears. Whenever the suffering comes, it inevitably brings an association between our mistakes and God’s anger. “What did I do to deserve this?” Amanda the cancer patient might ask. “There is no undoing all of the mess-ups I’ve made” Joey the traveler might suggest. Multiple psalms speak into the pain created by the intersection of human distress and God’s seeming contentment to let it all be. .
But, then, right in the middle of the psalm, the prayer changes direction. Instead of dwelling on God’s displeasure, the psalmist asks God to turn around, using the same language of repentance typically directed to humankind. Turn around, God. Incline yourself back to us. That’s a curious request of an everlasting, unchanging God. Surely God does not need to turn around.
I remember being a first-time parent, head-over-heels in love with my child and also new at the job> I was just figuring out how to decipher what cry means hunger and what one means “I’m tired.” Or I think of my first years serving in ministry, when I was so thrilled, scared and honored to be a pastor, so eager to do a good job and yet green, inexperienced. I wasn’t comfortable praying in public. I didn’t know how to not preach for 35 minutes. From the very beginning I loved my child. I was committed to a vocation, but over the decades I’ve changed. While the core of my intentions is the same, I better at the roles than I was at first. When I think of God receiving infinite prayers from whole creation – pleas for peace, safety, pleas to protect the earth, or give someone a job, save my marriage or heal my child, surely God is changed by those prayers. The faithfulness, the everlasting quality of God is not altered, it is deepened. God moving closer to us as we trustingly reach out, teaching us again how the gap between human finitude and God’s greatness is closed by God’s turning toward us.
On Friday morning, I got up early to feed the animals, walk the dog, make kids’ lunches and then drive my daughter to school. The return trip took nearly an hour, due to the firefighter’s funeral across the street. As I sat in standstill traffic, I thought of the tragic loss of life, so young he was, and the instinctive, holy impulse to honor his sacrifice. Alongside the thoughts ran my own to-do list for the day: sermon, stewardship materials, phone calls, worship planning, Trunk-or-Treat and a piano concert at day’s end. The days go so fast, sometimes, and there is so much to do.
Perhaps it was the funeral, or maybe the fact that All Saints Day is approaching, but my thoughts wandered to my grandmother, who lived to nearly 100 and my father, who died at 82. The days slowed down at the end of their lives. “Where did the time go,” my grandmother asked in the last week of her life. “I wish I could go back and change that one decision,” someone else might say. When you think about the past decade what do you remember? A birth, death, celebration. A trip. The joy of an ordinary day. The hidden labor than only you know you did.
Time, real time, is not measured by human clocks, by our Apple watches or buzzing phones. Time belongs to God, who made the sun and the moon, and set the stars aglow in the sky. Time is measured in love, in faithfulness, and held in an everlasting dwelling place created by God yet open to each of us. The meaning of who we are and what we have done, is redeemed by One who knows each hair upon your head, every prayer you have uttered, every tear you have shed.
We are living in a whirlwind . . . of war, fear, ecological threat, with anxiety about how we are going to hold onto the lives we want to lead pulsating all around us. And so we, like the psalmist, pray, “teach us to number our days, O God,” by the clock of eternity. Let us see our lives through the prism of your love. Let us use our days to bring your love. Amen.