SIGNIFICANCE (Psalm 90)

(A continuing series on the 48 psalms commended for study during times of feeling down, from counselor/pastor David Seamands’ book, Healing for Damaged Emotions.)

Above my kitchen sink is a framed calligraphy of Psalm 90:12, 14, in a refreshing version, prepared and gifted to me by a friend. In his retirement, this smart engineer-type guy took up calligraphy! I knew his wife better, as she was co-leader (with my mother) of a pre-teen girl’s “Horizons Club” (a version of long-ago Camp Fire Girls). Her daughter and I were classmates from grade school through high school, though we went our separate ways after graduation and lost touch. He died in 2004 at age 85, she at the same age two years later. Still, I will never forget their investment in me as one of their “girls” during the awkward adolescent years. I love the simple but beautiful script he chose for these verses:
Our lives are over in a breath.
Teach us to count how few days we have and so gain wisdom of heart.
Let us wake in the morning filled with Your love, and sing and be happy all our days.

LIFE LESSON

“Teach us to number our days aright,” wrote Moses, the psalm’s author, “that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” Living to 120, Moses outlived his predictions of typical life span of 70 to 80 years (v. 10). Those years “quickly pass,” he declared. Bible teachers observe that Moses spent the first forty years of his life thinking he was “somebody” (favored adopted royal son). For another forty years, he was a nobody (a criminal refugee in the wilderness). In the third forty, he found out God can do with a nobody (leading thousands upon thousands of former slaves from Egypt to the Promised Land). If we were to review our biographies, how we’d position those age numbers for ourselves would be telling!

Did Moses ever get depressed?  No doubt! Think of his fall from royalty to obscurity when his anger and resulting choice of murder sent him to obscurity amidst baa-ing sheep. Then came a God-task that needed God-enabling-power: the Exodus. Leadership is a lonely place, and mistakes are costly. Moses’ anger cost him the privilege of stepping foot in the Promised Land . The story is in Numbers 20; in reading it, notice the “we” of verse 10.The Israelites were grumbling about no water. God told Moses to speak to a certain rock and He—God—would cause it to burst forth water. Instead, Moses yelled, “Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water our of this rock?” With that little pronoun, he put himself on the same level as God in bringing about a miracle Then he angrily struck it instead of speaking to it.

LIFE PURPOSE

At life’s end, Moses had to just look across the horizon to Canaan, realizing that for all his labor in leading the unruly refugees, he would not enter it. Sometimes we don’t know why certain things we feel we deserved are kept from us, but we need to trust the wisdom and love of God for what we lack in this life. As sinful humans, we pack a lot of “entitlements.” Our consumer culture doesn’t help. We want more, and more. Moses’ attitude adjustment comes in verses 14-15:

Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.  Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, for as many years as we have seen trouble.

Many mornings my “quiet time” is tear-soaked as I pray for difficult situations and people in my life. I want things solved, not to drag on and on. But my husband keeps reminding me that I can’t fix the world.  Only Jesus can. I’m just to do the best I can with the abilities and opportunities God has put before me. My “significance” is measured in a different way when life is done. Thus I pray with Moses:

May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us; establish the work of our hands for us—yes, establish the work of our hands. (v. 17)

Don't chew on me!

Overzealous beavers have prompted groundskeepers at our local riverfront nature park to make its precious trees less appetizing. To keep the critters from chewing through the trees and felling them, they’ve wrapped fencing wire around trees at ground level. Unless the toothy critters want to acquire badly designed braces, they’re more apt to leave the “wired” trees alone. Protecting vital trees is a good thing, but wrapping barriers of false belief systems around us is not. The problem reminded me of how Robert S. McGee dealt with behaviors of rejection in his book, The Search for Significance (Rapha Publishing, 1985, 1990). The book offers a loving hand of hope to those who are cobbled by the ramifications of feeling rejected by God and others. Common in those negative thought patterns are these contradictory behaviors (p. 281):

*Easily manipulated, shy, silent, passive, prone to superficial relationships (real or virtual as in “Facebook” lurking).

*Hypersensitive to criticism and defensive (“nobody understands me”), sarcastic, hostile to those who disagree with them, tend to exaggerate truth to impress people.

Self-pity and discouragement lead in downward spirals until rejection and failure seem inevitable in anything they try. What a sad state to be in!  But I’ve seen it, and you probably have, too.  McGee’s book attempts to help people find healing by re-aligning their thinking and behavior as a result of embracing Biblical truths, including these (p. 407):

I am deeply loved by God (1 John 4:9-10)

I am completely forgiven, and am fully pleasing to God (Romans 5:1).
I am totally accepted by God (Colossians 1:21-22)
I am a new creation, complete in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17)

“Embrace” is one of those difficult words.  It’s one thing to agree these things are true.  It’s another—and painful—thing to overhaul one’s negative thinking patterns to Biblical truth. Yet this is what Paul had in mind when he urged us to “be transformed by the renewing of our mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2).  (By the way, years ago when memorizing this verse, I remembered the last part—“good, acceptable, perfect”-- as “gap,” a perfect acrostic for how God deals with the “gaps” in my life.)

Until we get these truths “right,” we’re like trees vulnerable to buck-toothed critters. The solution isn’t fence wire, but something far better, crafted by a Heavenly Father who wants only the best for us.