Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
“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 a sleep: 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.” Psalm 90:4-6
Psalm 90 was written by Moses as a form of a prayer. He had walked with God for many years, through the good times, but mostly through hard times. He acknowledged the the LORD had always been there for him. God is an everlasting God. Before there was an earth, a sky, the land and seas, there was God. He spoke man into existence, and He can take man out however He chooses. He knows how to get the attention of His children. Like my former pastor, Preacher Davis, used to say, “God knows your house number, and He will be around to see you one of these days.” That always made quite an impression upon me as a child, and it still does now.
Time has no significance to God. There is no differentiating the past, the present, and the future with God. He sees everything that has happened, is happening now, or will happen in the future all at the same time. That is hard for us humans to wrap our brains around, but we don’t have to understand it, explain it, or question it, we just have to believe it. A thousand years to Him is the same as one 24 hour period. We humans measure everything by time: What time is it? I don’t have time for such and such. There’s not enough time in the day. Time may not necessarily be on my side regardless of what the Rolling Stones sang. Time’s up. Time stops for no man. And so on. As long as we have life, we all have exactly the same amount of time–24 hours a day. So what are we doing with our time? It is astonishing how quickly life passes. One day we are young, energetic, and looking forward to the future, and then the future arrives, and we wonder how we got here so fast. I saw a t-shirt advertised on line that said, “I thought growing old would take longer!” I can identify with that statement.
King David wrote in Psalm 103, “As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.” Thus Moses and David were on the same page with their thoughts on time and the brevity of life. My cousin said one time that when your grandchildren have passed away, there will be no one that will remember you. The only ones who are remembered are those who end up in the history books, but under the present circumstances with folks trying to revise or even eliminate history, the movers and shakers of yesteryear will soon be forgotten. And then, with no memory of the past, we will be doomed to repeat all the mistakes that the study of history was designed to prevent. Go figure. If you have trouble with your ego, just remember what my cousin said.
Verse 7 and 8 tell us that we are worn out and troubled by God’s anger and wrath. He spreads out our sins before Him and sees them all. If you have trouble with sin, and who doesn’t, we have no self-defense against God’s wrath. We cannot hide our sins from Him. We can’t even hide our sins from others for sins have a way of making themselves known. If we disobey God and reject His mercy our lives will be filled with sorrow and misery, like some old soap opera filled with all sorts of drama. While watching those young folks on television burn, loot, and destroy cities, I can’t help but believe that they are some of the most miserable and unhappy people on earth. If they only knew that God loves them and could enable them to have joy and contentment.
There is good news. To counteract the hardships and daily drudgery that comes upon folks, we must count each day as a blessing and determine to live each one wisely. We must ask for God’s forgiveness and mercy when we stray from the straight and narrow. We also must ask Him to show us His power and glory. Since we are all caught up in the rat race of life, checking our watches, hoping that the afternoon will go better than the morning, we need to ask God to “teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). And then believe God to give us success as we endeavor to live for Him, and know that He will keep us in the palm of His hands forever.