NUMBERING OUR DAYS

“Who knows the power of your anger? For your wrath is as great as the fear that is due to you. Teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom”. Psalm 90:12

The earthquake and tsunami that have devastated parts of Japan are yet another huge reminder of our human predicament on this planet. They are a jolt to the whole world! The photographic coverage has been so wide and detailed that it has surpassed anything previous. We have all been visually right in the middle of the appalling chaos and destruction; cars, houses, ships, all piled on top of each other. Thousands of people swept away in minutes. Now Japan faces nuclear threats, and huge, widespread economic dislocation in the third largest world economy. All this happening in just twenty four hours or less!

One could put alongside this the wanton killing and destruction in Libya as Gaddafi holds on to an evil rule, and then add to that a whole string destructive events over the last few months, all of which have come to us with both the vividness and the speed of the technological age.
As I’ve thought over these events I have had very much in mind the words of Ps 46:8, “Come and see the works of the LORD, the desolations he has brought on the earth”. Not a popular scripture, I imagine, for many. Nor is it an easy one to process. But it’s there! It is not only astonishing that the psalmist unapologetically and directly attributes desolations to the LORD (the great I AM), but that he should also beckon us to “come and see”, to take note of them. The television screen has certainly made sure that there is no way we can miss those desolations!

Why should he want us to take a long hard look? The answer to that question is given in the same book of psalms, in the prayer, “teach us to number our days”. God wants us to come to a sober recognition that life is very uncertain and always limited. This is not in order to depress us or make us morbid. It is simply to help us to face up to reality and to face the questions, “what is my life for?” and, “What am I doing with it?” He doesn’t want us to bury the questions and miss the point of life. Unhappily, humanity’s pleasure loving and selfish bias rarely allows us to address such questions unless some disaster or scourge breaks over us. The point of life is not in pleasure loving. The desolations have a remedial intent.

The point of life is to find wisdom and walk in it – something infinitely more satisfying than mere pleasure! It is again the psalms that tell us that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”. Wisdom is in knowing God, what he is like, and walking in his ways of righteousness. Wisdom is godly living. The “fear of the Lord” comes from a recognition that a failure to love him and to love others will cause us to end up in desolation and judgement. A proper numbering of our days and an application to “wisdom” is, however, the pathway to life, both here and eternally.

For Chrstians the desolations are not a call to judge (that is God's prerogative), but to seek earnestly a deeper and more righteous life.


Bob

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