Eternity and Frailty
Rev Dr Mark Porizky
11/2/08
There
is a struggle that goes on within most of us, well, me anyway.
Perhaps you can relate.
I
want to be a saint, but I also want to feel every sensation experienced by
sinners; I want to be innocent and pure, but I also want to be experienced and
taste all of life; I want to serve the poor and have a simple lifestyle, but I
also want all the comforts of the rich; I want to have the depth afforded by
solitude, but I also do not want to miss anything; I want to pray, but I also
want to watch the World Series, read, talk to friends, exercise.
If
you are like me, it's no small wonder that life is often a trying enterprise,
and that we are often tired and pathologically overextended.
To this bi-polar saint/sinner reality that we live in, this Psalm,
perhaps the oldest of all the Psalms, speaks to the reality of our lives.
Lord,
you have been our dwelling-place
in all generations.
Before the mountains were brought forth,
or ever you had formed the earth and the world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
You turn us back to dust,
and say, ‘Turn back, you mortals.’
For a thousand years in your sight
are like yesterday when it is past,
or like a watch in the night.
You sweep them away; they are like a dream,
like grass that is renewed in the morning;
in the morning it flourishes and is renewed;
in the evening it fades and withers.
There’s
a question we all ask from time to time. Not every day, probably, not even most
days. But on certain days—when life slows down for a few moments, when the
calendar flips from one year to another, when we blow out the candles on another
birthday cake, when we hear of a celebrity who's passed away or of tens of
thousands lost in a wave of disaster—we stop and think about the passing of
time, about the meaning of our lives.
Rabbi
Harold Kushner writes, "Our souls are not hungry for fame, comfort, wealth,
or power. Those rewards create almost as many problems as they solve. Our souls
are hungry for meaning … we want our lives to matter."
As
Christian people, we want our lives to count for God. If that's going to be the
case, then we have to manage wisely the three primary resources God has
entrusted to us: our time, our money, and our talents. This
morning the Scripture asks us to consider the stewardship of time.
Psalm 90 may be one of the oldest pieces of
literature in the Bible. It's attributed to Moses, but we're not sure exactly
what that means—if Moses actually composed it, or if it came from Moses' era,
or if it was written by a later author from Moses' point of view. Whoever wrote
it, and whenever he wrote it, he was thinking about the passing of time. He
could have been a young person, looking ahead to all that life held for him. He
could have been an older person, looking back and wondering what his life had
meant. Or, he could just as easily have been at mid-life, looking both ways at
once, and wondering.
Whatever
the circumstances, and whichever way he's looking, the author sees two things:
First,
the eternality of God. "Lord, you have been our dwelling place through all
generations. Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the Earth and
the world, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God." To
make the point, the songwriter says, verse 4, "For a thousand years in your
sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night."
Now,
that verse is not some cipher for decoding the Book of Revelation; it's simply a
metaphor, a feeble attempt with human words to explain that God is not affected
by the passing of time. He's never late. He's never in a rush. He's never tired.
The
second thing he sees is the frailty of men and women, the brevity of human life.
"You turn men back to dust," he sings, reminding us that these bodies
that we work so hard to take care of, to keep healthy, to make more attractive,
will one day return to the Earth and be turned to dust. We're like people living
on a flood plain, verse 5 tells us, when the waters rise we're swept away while
sleeping in our beds. We're like grass, the song goes on, springing up bright
and green after a midsummer night's rain, only to wither and die under the
afternoon sun.
So
how do we resolve this tension between the eternality of God and the frailty of
human life? We sense that we were made for something more than this life. God
has set eternity in our hearts. We want to do something that will last. Yet time
so quickly catches up with us, and most of what we accomplish in this life turns
to dust along with these bodies we inhabit. The castles we spend our lives
building get washed away when the tidal wave called time washes over us. How can
we make sure our lives will count, not only in this life, but beyond?
The
answer, says the songwriter, is to number our days—to count them, to value
them. Verse 12 is the turning point in the psalm, where the song shifts from
lament to hope. "Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a
heart of wisdom." Everybody counts something. Wise people count the things
that really matter.
I
don't know what kids count today—video game scores, or the number of A's on
their report card, or the wins and losses of their team. Teenagers count the
number of friends they have on Facebook, the number of colleges they get into.
College students count grade points and credit hours—at least I hope some of
them do. Others count how many beers they can drink in a night, which somehow
proves their manhood. Adults measure their happiness and success by the number
of bedrooms in their house, the cars in the garage, the degrees they have, their
golf score, or the yield on their investments.
Psalm
90 warns us not to go through life counting the wrong things. If you want your
life to count for something, number your days. Count the days and hours and
minutes; value them, make the most of them, and measure your life by what you do
with them. It seems to me that two things happen when we number our days.
First, when we number our days, we realize
how few of them we really have. Most people live like they have an unlimited
number of days. We expect to live long lives, and figure we have so many days we
can't even count them all. But the songwriter reminds us that we have a limited
number of days, 70 or 80 years by his reckoning. That may sound like a lot,
especially when you're only 15. But when you do the math, when you actually
number the days, you find out you have something like 29,200 days if you live to
be 80. When you put it that way, it's not that many. Just 30,000 days to live.
Think about it in terms of money. It doesn't take long to spend $30,000, does
it? Or lose it in this year’s
stock market.
Psalm
90, like the other songs we've been talking about this morning, remind us that,
sooner or later, we're all going to die. And most of the time, it comes sooner
than we'd like. We don't like to face that reality, but until we do, we'll never
know how to make our lives count. One commentator paraphrases verse 12 this way:
"Teach us to remember that we must die, in order that we might know how to
live."
That's
the second thing that happens when we number our days: we spend them more
wisely.
I
came across a study from some years ago of how typical Americans spend their
time. The average American adult spends about seven-and-a-half hours a day
sleeping, three-and-a-half hours a day working, two hours a day watching TV,
one-and-a-half hours doing housework, one hour eating, half-an-hour on
recreation, half-an-hour washing and grooming, and about nine minutes thinking.
That study was done about ten years ago, before the Internet and video games had
become so popular, so who knows what it would reveal now.
Notice that the number of minutes per day on average spent in worship or
service to others was so insignificant it didn't even show up in the survey!
If
you were to number your days, your hours, and your minutes, what would it reveal
about the way you're spending them? After sleeping and work, would TV be third
on the list? You hope not, but you really don't know till you sit down and do
the numbers, do you?
Time
is like money. You can use it to buy things—things that you need or want. But
in order to spend your money wisely, you have to know how much you have. If you
go shopping without knowing how much you have, you can get in a lot of trouble.
You may put too many things in your shopping cart, and find out you don't have
the money to pay for them. Or, you can walk out of the store without the things
you really need, because you didn't think you had enough money in your pocket.
Most
people make one of those two mistakes when it comes to time. Some people,
younger people especially, think they have so much time they can afford to waste
some; they'll get to the important things later when they're done with school,
when the kids are older, or when things aren't so busy at work. But then they
run out of time before they get to those things. Other people think they have
too little time, that they can't possibly do something significant for others or
for God, so they don't even try. The thing about time, unlike money, is that we
all have the very same amount to work with—24 hours a day. And we all have
just enough time for the things that God would have us to do.
That's
why it's so important to number your days and hours, so you understand how many
you have to work with, so you can spend them wisely.
None
of us knows how many days and years we'll be given on this Earth. Maybe we'll
get a hundred years to live, or maybe threescore and ten, or maybe less. But we
all know how many years we've been given to this point. Maybe it's only 15 or 22
or 33 or 46 or 67 or 93—but suppose you were to draw a line under those years
right now and do a subtotal. Suppose you were to number the hours and days and
years you have lived to this point. What would you have to show for them,
eternally speaking? How many of them have you intentionally offered up to God
for his glory? What have you accomplished that will follow you into eternity?
Because
if you want your life to count, you have to number your days.
Will you pray with me now?
St.
Andrew Presbyterian Church, Groton
,
Web Site: WWW.SAPC-CT.ORG
Office Email: OFFICE@SAPC-CT.ORG
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