Series: Dwelling in the Psalms
October 25, 2026
William G. Carter
Psalm 90 is our reminder that, in the light of God’s eternity, human life is pretty short. How’s that working out for you.
I sat down recently to watch a favorite movie. It’s an honest film called About Schmidt. Jack Nicholson plays Warren Schmidt, a man whose dreams for retirement are interrupted. Right after his retirement dinner, his wife Helen dies unexpectedly. She leaves him with a Winnebago that he thinks is too big, and there’s nobody to cook or clean for him. His daughter Jeannie is marrying an idiotic waterbed salesman with a bad mullet. Schmidt expected his autumn years would continue without any interruptions, but he has now awakened to a new reality.
And Warren Schmidt, of all people, knows that 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.
In the very next scene, he is taking a nap in his Lazy Boy recliner.
Sometimes the Bible is too honest for us to handle. Psalm 90 is one of those honest passages. It begins with a polite statement of God’s eternal presence. “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."
But pretty soon, the Psalmist admits that while God is eternal, we are not. “You turn us back to dust. You sweep us away. We are like a dream that fades by morning. We are a field of grass that withers by sunset.”
Is he shaking his fist at God? I don’t think so. He is simply admitting the way it is. Like it or not, admit it or not, all of us are running out of time. All of us know this, even if most of would rather avoid this. We would like to keep up the illusion that we will always be youthful and spry, that we will never wear out or break down, that the warranty on our parts will never be challenged.
But then, we have a truthful moment that brings us up short. We remember what we would rather forget.
In many homes, a silence settles in when the parents say, “You know, we need to put together a will.” It is quiet for the rest of the day. We don’t like to think about running out of time. We don’t want the dream to fade.
And then, for instance, a seventeen-year-old smashes up her parents’ car on a winter night. Nobody knows what to do. Nobody knows what to say. Everybody is in shock. They don’t want to hear it was a miscalculation in physics: that if you drive that fast on bad tires on an icy road and slam on your brakes to avoid that oak tree, you’re not going to be able to stop in time. They don’t want to hear that. All they know is that this isn’t right. She’s a teenager. She is supposed to live forever. She’s not supposed to run out of time. But she does.
Contrast that with a fourth-century saint of the church. He found a human skeleton and put it beside him on his bed. (He was a really strange saint!) But this was his constant reminder that death was his constant companion and could visit him at any time.
We don’t want to hear this kind of thing. That’s why the Psalmist gives us nine verses of warning, right in the middle of Psalm 90. In fact, when this psalm appears in the worship books of the church, usually these middle verses are left out.
For all our days pass away under your wrath; our years
come to an end like a sigh. The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps
eighty if we are strong; even then their span is only toil and trouble; they
are soon gone, and we fly away.
With a message like that from Psalm 90, some request cheerful hymns to sing. This old text does not hand out any pink lollipops. “O Lord,” says the psalmist, “Your wrath is as great as the fear that you deserve.”
The Bible scholars say this passage reminds us God is God. God is not mean, but God is not arbitrary. God does not dish out meaninglessness. But neither will anybody ever step on God’s holy feet. There are limits on what we can and cannot accomplish in this life. There is only so much that we can get done in one day. Even if the scriptures declare that God loves us, “Death is the final and ultimate ‘no’ that cancels any pretension to autonomy from the human side.”[1]
Now, I’m not bringing this up because my bones are creaking a little bit more than they did last year. But a text like Psalm 90 forces us to take stock of our lives: who we are, and what we’ve done, and what we haven’t done, and what we may not get to do.
Years ago, when one of my friends turned fifty, he found a website that he should have ignored. I wouldn’t recommend it. The address is www.deathclock.com. It’s billed as “the “Internet’s friendly reminder that life is slipping away,” and it is a strange site. You can type in your birth date, gender, health data, and it will predict the probable date of your death.
I wasn’t going to try it, but curiosity got the better of me. Depending on whether I can lower my body mass index or improve my mood, I’m going to last until somewhere between 2033 and 2052. It is rather ominous to see it in print; so much so, I’ve actually thought about taking up exercise and watching what I eat. When you know that time is short, you do what you can to make the most of what you have.
We cannot finish our own lives – much less finish all the projects around the house. That’s what the psalmist says in five or six different ways. He doesn’t intend this to be 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.
We know this because we live in northeastern Pennsylvania and it is nearly time to put on snow tires. The best laid plans can be cancelled by an unexpected snow day.
We cannot do it all; knowing this is a gift of wisdom. And so, Walter Brueggemann notes in his commentary on the psalms, "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]
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 eternally patient. To affirm that life happens to us, through us, and in spite of us. To say once again, there is nothing that can ever really separate us from the love of God. To hold fast to such truths is to prepare for a wise heart.
It is of great comfort to remember that God does not wear a wristwatch. God is eternal, standing outside of human time, while mysteriously entering it 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 is our savior. We are always up against the wall, and our own failings are obvious. But God has the ability to finish what we cannot. God is eternal.
I like how theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once put it:
§
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 interpretation of Psalm 90 may come from the hymn we’re singing today:
Our God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come.
Be Thou our guide while life shall
last, and our eternal home.[4]
Regarding short time, the best lesson may come from Morrie Schwartz. Do you know that great little book, Tuesdays With Morrie? A sportswriter named Mitch Albom reports on some lessons he learned from his college English professor, Morrie Schwartz. Morrie has a terminal disease, and it has focused his perspective on his remaining days:
“Let’s begin with this idea,” Morrie said.
“Everyone knows they’re going to die, but nobody believes it. If we did, we
would do things differently.”
So we kid ourselves about death, I said.
“Yes. But there’s a better approach. To
know you’re going to die, and to be prepared for it at any time. That’s better.
That way you can actually be more involved in your life while you’re living…”
How can you ever be prepared to die?
“Every day, have a little bird on your
shoulder that asks, ‘Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do?
Am I being the person I want to be?”
Morrie continued, “Most of us all walk
around as if we’re sleepwalking. We really don’t experience the world fully,
because we’re half-asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do.”
And facing death changes all that?
“Oh, yes. You strip away all that stuff and
you focus on the essentials. When you realize you are going to die, you see
everything much differently.”
He sighed. “Learn how to die, and you
learn how to live.”[5]
I hate to bring this up, but time is short. The Psalmist says, “Lord, teach us to number our days, that we may be full of wisdom.” 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 hug a child. Plant a tree. Enjoy a purple sunset. Write the next great American novel. Forgive the lingering grudge. Make a fabulous meal. Take a stand against wastefulness. Plan a legacy gift for your church. Tell a stranger that he or she is worthy of your respect. Above all, tell your loved ones that you love them.
The time is short. That’s OK, for God’s steadfast love endures forever.
[1] James L.
Mays, Psalms, Interpretation (
[2] Walter Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms
(Minneapolis: Augsburg) 111.
[3] Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (New York: Charles Scribner’s sons, 1952) 63.
[4] Isaac
Watts, The Presbyterian Hymnal, 210.
[5] Mitch
Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie (New
York: Doubleday, 1999) 80-83
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