November 19, 2023
William G. Carter
The story is told of a young boy who dreamed of going into
outer space. When he was little, his dad bought him a toy rocket. From that
moment, his imagination took over. The countdown would begin, “Ten-nine-eight-seven-six-five-four-three-two-one.”
And he would hurl that rocket into the air.
The dream stayed with him. He leaned forward in science class. The possibility of zero gravity excited him. He investigated what kind of foods he could eat in outer space.
And the adults who encouraged his interest were curious. What’s the attraction to becoming an astronaut? Do you want to explore new worlds? Colonize Mars? Go where no one has gone before? One day, at age twelve, he replied. “I want to fly into eternity. Infinity and beyond!”
He had a point. There are no clocks in outer space, just revolving planets that rotate around the sun. The universe seems endless, with no obvious limits, no schedules, no deadlines. After you launch, you just float on forever.
One day, a well-intentioned adult pointed out, “Space may go on forever, but you won’t. You have sixty, seventy, maybe eighty years to go.” When the truth of that sank in, he landed with a thud. There is eternity, call it God’s infinity. Compared to that, our lives are short.
This is the truth of Psalm 90. We have an everlasting God, a God who was there before there was a beginning. Before the mountains, before the earth, before the whole universe was sung into being, God was. As a wise old Episcopalian priest once said to me, “God is prior.” That is, before it all. This eternal God shall also outlast us.
The poet who put together Psalm 90 knows this. Perhaps she was a philosopher, watching the rise and fall of one person after another. Maybe she observed a sunset like the one we watched on Thursday afternoon, a sherbet-colored sky streaked with red, orange, and purple, and then decided there was beauty before us, there will be beauty after us, and that kind of eternity will outlive us all. Maybe that gives you comfort. Or maybe you want to push against it.
The psalmist pushes a bit. Three times, we hear about the “anger
and wrath” of God. This is not a scare tactic. The poet is not trying to
frighten us, like those fire and brimstone preachers in other churches and
previous generations. No, the “anger and wrath” in this psalm sound more like a
recognition that sooner or later, life gets hard.
All those iniquities over the years, those secret things that twisted us out of shape, they are exposed in God’s searing light. The effects of aging, the aches and pains, that touch of arthritis that I now have in my right hand – it’s ouch and sigh.
Blame Adam and Eve if you wish. Our primeval parents lived in an eternal Garden until they committed an act of independence. With that, God put limits on our lives. We had to live with the passing of four seasons, the cycles of the moon, the creation of the sundial, the calendar, the clock, the wristwatch, and a thousand handheld devices that shackle us. Our sense of time is merely a subdivision of eternity. Even if we could blast off into eternal space, at some moment, we would run out of time.
The last time I preached on this psalm was 2008, fifteen years ago. Back then, I mentioned a website that a friend recommended. It is www.deathclock.com. I don’t recommend it. It’s billed as “the internet’s friendly reminder that life is slipping away.” If you type in your birthdate, gender, weight, and emotional mood, it will calculate how long you have left.
In 2008, the death clock told me that I will last until 2033, just ten years from now. Pretty ominous if you ask me. So, the other day, I tried it again and it said, “October 24, 2032.” Uh oh – I lost a year. And on a whim, I tried a second time. This time, it said, “November 14, 2047.” Wow – I picked up fifteen years! Then I realized I’ve given my birthdate to a computer server in China. Twice, in fact. And some stupid website cannot tell me how long I have left.
But if only we knew. If only.
When our men’s group gathered last Thursday to reflect on the psalm for today, I considered showing them a portion of one of my favorite movies but decided against it. It’s a film called About Schmidt. Jack Nicholson plays Warren Schmidt, a man whose dreams for retirement are interrupted. His wife dies unexpectedly. She left him with a Winnebago he didn’t want. Their daughter is marrying an idiot. Not what he expected for his autumn years!
And Schmidt, of all people, knows life is short. As he explains,
I was an actuary at Woodmen of the
World Insurance Company. If I’m given a man’s age, race, profession, place of
residence, marital status, and medical history, I can calculate with great
probability how long that man will live. In my own case, now that my wife has
died there is a 73% chance I will die within nine years, provided that I do not
remarry. All I know is I’ve got to make the best of whatever time I have left.
Life is short, and I can’t afford to waste another minute.
The Bible scholars say this passage reminds us that God is God. God is not arbitrary. God is not mean. God does not dish out absurdity or meaninglessness. But neither will anybody ever step on God’s toes. There are limits to what we can and cannot accomplish in this life. There is only so much that we can get done in one day. Even if God loves us, one scholar reminds us, “Death is the final and ultimate ‘no’ that cancels any pretension to autonomy from the human side.”[1]
We cannot finish our own lives. We may not finish all the projects around the house. That’s what Psalm 90 says in five or six different ways. This is not intended as good news. It’s simply the news of how things are. There are limits to our ability. No matter how capable we are, we cannot do it all. No matter how good we try to be, there are limits which are established beyond our control. No matter how much time we think we have, we will not have enough. Either that, or we get bored with the time we have. Or end up taking a nap while the world carries on.
This psalm, with the collection of the psalms, lies under the category of biblical wisdom. It lies beside the wisecracking book of Proverbs, the sardonic book of Ecclesiastes, the passion of the Song of Solomon, and the head-scratching mysteries of the book of Job. All of them are unified in the truth that God is greater than we are – God is a whole lot smarter, God is more elusive, God is more loving or more faithful, or – in this case – God has longevity that we don’t have.
It's that insight that gets echoed in the strange Second Letter of Peter, one of the other texts for today. An early apostle reflects on the final coming of Christ, that great day when history will end, when all things will be caught up in the glory of God. It’s going to be a big moment, the greatest of all – but it’s taking a while. It’s taking a long while.
So, Peter draws on the language of our psalm by saying, “Don’t forget that, with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.” God is not being slow, he says. God’s showing you some patience. God is giving you some time to shape up and come to your senses. (2 Peter 3:8-15)
This is the beginning of wisdom, what the psalmist calls “a heart full of wisdom,” or simply “a wise heart.” In the words of one scholar, "A wise heart does not refer to knowledge, skill, technique, or the capacity to control. Instead, it seems to mean the capacity to submit, relinquish, and acknowledge the decisive impingement of Yahweh on one's life."[2]
God will outlive us. Ultimately God will win…over everything. One way to gain this wise heart is to lean back into God’s everlasting arms and try to get the biggest picture possible - - to see as God sees, over vast spans of time. To be patient, as God is infinitely patient. To affirm that life happens to us, through us, and in spite of us. To declare there is nothing separates us from the steadfast love of the Lord. To hold fast to such truths is to develop a wise heart.
It is of great comfort to remember God does not wear a wristwatch. God is eternal, standing outside of human time, while mysteriously entering our time with the grace of Jesus Christ. From moment to moment, we catch glimpses of how God is inclined to help us when we can’t help ourselves, and that’s how God will save us. To some extent, we are always up against the wall and our own failings are obvious. But God holds the ability to finish what we cannot.
In my journal, I’ve copied and re-copied some words by the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. They give me perspective, and they go like this:
- Nothing
that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we are
saved by hope.
- Nothing
which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate
context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith.
- Nothing
we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are
saved by love.
- No
virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe
as it is from our standpoint. Therefore, we must be saved by the final
form of love which is forgiveness.”[3]
Our time is short. But God’s time is eternal. And the best way to number our days is to make them count. To do something important with whatever time we have left.
And so, I charge you to help a child reach for the stars. Enjoy a sherbet-colored sunset. Plant a sequoia. Write the next great American novel. Forgive the lingering grudge. Feed the hungry. Empty your pockets for somebody else’s children. Take a stand against wastefulness. Show strangers they are worthy of your respect. Tell those who circle around you that you love them. Make the most of what you have left, because, eternally speaking, time is short.
Most of all, don’t sweat the small stuff and don’t sweat the big stuff, for God’s steadfast love endures forever.
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