“Return, O LORD! How long? Have pity on Your servants! Satisfy us in the morning with Your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad for as many days as You have afflicted us, and for as many years as we have seen evil.” Psalm 90:13-15
Devotional Thought For The Day
In this psalm Moses has been dwelling upon the effects of the fall into sin, consequences which have plagued and afflicted mankind for our entire history. Aging, death, toil, and trouble are identified as the evidence of God’s wrath and judgment upon human sin – which every human being commits in abundance. We ourselves are angry and filled with wrath over the sins of others, especially when they deeply impact us or when they outrageously damage or destroy the lives of others. We can understand God’s wrath over human sin – but we are not inclined to welcome His justice over our own dark sin. So our own experiences of His judgment upon human sin, our own included, help us to move toward honesty and repentance, which yields greater humility before God and one another. How sad when we observe others, sometimes even the elderly, who still pathetically strut about [as best they are able] crowing about how “good” and “great” they are. What a pathetic waste of time and energy to spend one’s last few years “creating” fiction about one’s legacy – which no one will believe or remember anyway. Lord, have mercy! A better legacy would be honesty and humility and constant witnessing to God’s mercy and love.
Moses put no hope or confidence in his own personal legacy. In fact, he wrote bluntly about his own sin and weakness – murder, anger, unbelief, unfaithfulness, etc. In these verses he clearly indicates his hope, and the only hope for fallen mankind, and that is the gracious and merciful love of God. God has answered Moses’ prayer fully and completely in the gift of His Son, the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Through the knowledge of God’s gracious forgiveness and mercy, His gift of eternal life and salvation through faith in Jesus, God has “satisfied” us with His steadfast love and enabled us to “rejoice and be glad all our days.” This gift of love and salvation enables us to bear with all of the labor and toil, the trials and tribulations of this life, knowing that all will be relieved and made perfect in the life which is to come. It takes away the sting of death and frees us to reasonably and rationally enjoy the many good things of life in this world, in spite of the compromised quality of our sinful being. And we have hope – not just to have as many good years in this life as we have evil years, but God has promised that “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed in us.” [Rom. 8:18]
This psalm makes clear, through the reality of troubles, aging, and death, that there is no hope for us other than the gracious mercy and love of God. It denudes us of all ground for boasting and arrogance, for creating some delusion of self-importance to live in and live out of. Still this psalm gives us the ultimate comfort and joy, at least to those who believe, in the assurances of God’s steadfast love for us and His promises to us in Christ Jesus, the Seed of the woman, that all will be well for those who take humble refuge in God’s gracious love, who call upon the Name of the Lord. Our hope is not for this life only, but for all that God has promised us – “the glory that is to be revealed in us.” This is the glorious good news of the kingdom which we seek to share with others, that they too may come to know and believe the love that God has for us and join us in rejoicing and gladness “all our days.” This is what Christian worship celebrates and inculcates into our daily lives – “all our days.” Let us pray with Moses that God grant greater realization of this blessedness of faith and knowledge of His love to each of us, and to all people everywhere.
Prayer For The Day
Dear Lord Jesus, help us to have clear insight into the blessings that You have brought to us in Your great gift of salvation, wrought through Your bitter sufferings and death, and Your glorious resurrection. Help us to see clearly the blessings You will for us to have, in this life and the next, that satisfied with Your steadfast love we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Amen.