Because in the grand scheme of things…

***A note before I start…I love your comments and truly appreciate each and every one…whether it’s when we meet in person, a Facebook post, or you comment here.

I always try to acknowledge in some way by responding.

However, I learned yesterday that when you make a comment here on the site it offers you the option of receiving an email if I respond. 

Apparently that is not working.  I have no idea how to fix it…so if you make a comment, you will have to go back to that day’s post to read my response.

How fun is that? Sorry…

and now without further digression…today’s follow up on Psalm 90****

Yesterday I talked about the “SO” in verse 12…

So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.   Psalm 90:12 NKJV

The word “so” in this sentence implies to me that there is a conclusion being drawn up from previous thoughts.

As I worked backward through the passages to find out why it is important to be a student of how to make the most of each day for the goal of gaining a heart of wisdom, I ended up at the beginning.

Of course.

So (see what I did there?) ….

let’s look at the Psalm from the start and I am choosing the wording from The Living Bible for a fresh look at the passages.

Lord, through all the generations you have been our home! 

 Before the mountains were created, before the earth was formed, you are God without beginning or end.                  verses 1 and 2

The first thing that speaks to me is just …. home…I have lived in a ton of them.

Thanks to my dad being in the Air Force and then having several post-retirement jobs, we moved a lot. I longed for a stable place to call home. I wanted that for our children, and God blessed us to raise our family in the same town they were born in.

However; irony of ironies…we have ended up living in 7 “homes” here in this town, plus a 6 month stint in Galesburg over the course of our marriage.

BUT…this passage reminds me…wherever we have dwelt…the LORD has been our HOME.

Then there is the aspect of this passage that draws me into connection with all the generations past and all the ones to come who make their home IN THE LORD.

He existed before and will exist after time.

He was HOME for believers in every chapter of the Bible and in every generation of believers that have followed until He takes us all HOME…

That’s pretty stable.

SO….in light of this…teach me, Laura, who lives in this time and this nation and this neighborhood on this pin dot of the timeline of eternity, to realize the value of each day as significant in Your big picture of TIME.

Because….

The next verses between this heart warming assurance of the endurance of God in verse 1 and 2 and the breath prayer of verse 12 are not for the faint of heart.

But they are real and honest. 

 You speak, and man turns back to dust.  

A thousand years are but as yesterday to you! They are like a single hour!

We glide along the tides of time as swiftly as a racing river and vanish as quickly as a dream.

We are like grass that is green in the morning but mowed down and withered before the evening shadows fall.

We die beneath your anger; we are overwhelmed by your wrath.  

You spread out our sins before you—our secret sins—and see them all.  No wonder the years are long and heavy here beneath your wrath. All our days are filled with sighing.    verses 3-9

Now before we get all defensive and down…it’s the truth people.

For all the passion we feel about political campaigns and ribbons on our bumpers and letters to the editor…when we are gone…we are gone…

Ask any high school all-star that comes back a few years later to a game.

Last year’s Oscar winner is this year’s Netflix special.

Our story is about the time we are in and then we are gone.

And honestly, in our finest moments, we are not worthy of the love He lavishes on us.

We are prone to wander and a bit scruffy and if He actually and literally APPEARED, as we often implore Him to do in our various circumstances, we would not be waving our fists saying to the world at large, “SEE!! I told you He’s a big deal…”

No

We would be flat on our faces, fully aware of our unworthiness and overcome by His Holiness.

Seventy years are given us! And some may even live to eighty. But even the best of these years are often empty and filled with pain; soon they disappear, and we are gone.

 Who can realize the terrors of your anger?

Which of us can fear you as he should?      verses 10 & 11

Granted some lives end well before 70 and a precious few live to be over 100; but in light of eternity…what are these numbers?

And we might get defensive about this negativity expressed with phrases like “often empty and filled with pain”….but if we are realistic…even the greatest seasons of our lives are sprinkled with the mundane at best and true heartache at worst.

Our Rachel texted me a cartoon yesterday with four boxes showing a mom’s day. The first three involved the reality of getting kids to share toys, breaking up squabbles, and the moments when you think you will pull your ever-loving-hair out of your head…then the last frame is the previously frazzled parent looking down on a sleeping child with the thought bubble “I love you so much I might die”.

Truth….the early years of parenting that I wax poetic for here in the empty nest…about stole every ounce of sanity I had some days. And yet they filled my heart with some of its greatest treasures.

And this Psalm pulls me up out of all of it and reminds me that all of my “little picture” is held in the balance of His eternal perspective.

Which brings us to verse 12…

So….therefore, Lord, because You are holy and right and pure and beautiful; and I am not…because You have a marvelous eternal story that You have written my part into….

Teach me….instruct me, show me, give me guidance, spell it out for me, impart to me the knowledge and skills I need….

To number my days….to be intentionally in the use of the time you give me each of the 24 hours of however many days You have ordained for me to walk this earth and touch lives and love and laugh and cry and hope and dream and create and bear fruit…

So that….in order that, in such a way as, for the purpose of, to the end result that….

I may gain a heart of wisdom….I would be able to have, in increasing measure, in my innermost being the ability to make decisions each day that are full of knowledge so that the consequences of my choices and decisions….major and minor….would be for Your honor and glory on this earth at this time in this place.

I would love to sit over a coffee with you right now and hear your thoughts…

but so would God…

Could you take a moment to go back over that Psalm and breathe your own prayers today for direction?

God bless you…and me…as we…journey onward <3