Divine Perspective
We have had a good first day of the spring time change. I was reading a FaceBook post of my friend Reece Bowling when he said to prepare for the time change he put his kids to bed early. I responded and said, “I put myself to bed early.” Of course, it helped that I was fairly tired at the end of the day and so it all worked out well.
Today was the annual missions emphasis at Timberline Church. My friend Norm Edwards from the Ukraine was the guest speaker. Norm carries out a leadership role in this important region of the world and did an excellent job in sharing his message. I was surprised to learn that he had been following my health crisis journey. The last time I saw him was just a few months before my hospitalization.
BIBLE VERSE FOR TODAY… “A thousand years to you are like one day; they are like yesterday, already gone,
like a short hour in the night.…Seventy years is all we have—eighty years, if we are strong; yet all they bring us is trouble and sorrow; life is soon over, and we are gone…..Teach us how short our life is, so that we may become wise. Lord our God, may your blessings be with us. Give us success in all we do!” Psalm 90:4,10,12,17
At this stage of my life, I am comfortable, not frustrated with understanding more about God than I have. In a recent “Grief Share” lessons it was pointed out that Job, having gone through His troubles and suffering, came to understand and know God as he never had before.
It is interesting how we consistently view God from our perspective. When we read about a thousands years being like a day to God, many try to fit that into an equation for predicting prophetic events. What we realize is the simple truth that God is above time. When we stop and think, “wow, this day flew by” imagine if that were a thousand years. Instead of thinking, “That was tough day!” God sees it as “that was a tough millennium, glad those thousand years are over!” But even that really doesn’t help us understand the limitlessness and timelessness of God.
So, the Psalmist refers to the life span of a person being 70-80 years and those years are trouble and toil, but even if we live a long life they are but a tick of the clock to God. And then when a health crisis arises or an accident takes place you realize that life can be “snuffed out” almost before it begins.
The challenge is, without a tragic “wake up call,” to understand how fleeting, fragile and precious life is. And to make the most of our days on this earth. We need the Lord’s strength, wisdom and provision. So the Psalmist prays, “teach us to number our days.” Perhaps that is best understood from the stand point of, “let’s remember life is fleeting and short, especially in light of eternity.” We need to be stewards of our days. We need to use them, invest them, plan them in a way that honors the Lord.
Then I like the final verse of Psalm 90. “Lord, our Lord” or to personalize, “Lord, my Lord.” He is not the distant God, He is the personal God. He is the God who makes Himself known to His people and is available to help us through each day. While our fleeting time is nothing to God, we are something to Him! He desires for us to know His blessings and grant us success in all that we do, as we live our lives unto Him.