Men of dust; eternal God

I have not written for the past two weeks as I've either been too sick to think or too busy working when well to take time to write.  I did not get the worst of the two chemicals this past Monday and so I was not as sick on Wednesday and Thursday as the previous 10 times but I was not as well as I had hoped.  However, today, Friday, I am much stronger than during any previous "chemo" week.  I thank the Lord for this mercy and look forward to taking the final treatment on August 6.  After that I will be tested for cancer in February of 2013.

I've given very little thought to the fact that I have/had cancer during these treatments.  Mostly I've been trying to survive the treatments.  However, as I have been contemplating the fact that, at least for the next five years, I will be living with the reality that a tumor could appear at any time, my thoughts have turned to my mortality which led me to a favorite psalm, Psalm 90.  As with so many psalms, the first half is not really good news.  The psalm is written by Moses and it has the flavor of the wilderness journey waiting for all the people who were 20 years old and up at the rebellion at Kadesh Barnea to die.

The first line asserts two realities: First, all humans, in all generations live in God, that is, we would not exist if God did not exist.  He is our dwelling place.  In him alone is life to be found.  Second, he is eternal; he has no beginning and he has no end.  He always is.  The mountains and the earth itself are but as babes compared to the eternal God.  Then comes the bad news and lots of it.  The eternal God is the one who turns humans back to dust when he declares to us: "Return, O children of man."  That last phrase is  literally, in the Hebrew, "sons of Adam."  Clearly Moses is thinking of God's curse given to Adam as a result of his disobedience and which is now our curse as well.  Genesis 3:19, "By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return." 

God is in charge of death.  He it is who determines each person's days on this earth.  He decrees when we each return to the dust from which we were taken.  It is by his word that each human dies and returns to the elements from which we were created.  Thus our time on this earth is finite, limited, it has a definite end.  However, as v. 4 declares, there is no limit to God's time.  15 lifetimes of men may pass and for God it was if yesterday had passed or the night was gone.  There are no limits to this God whereas for us, we are very limited.  God sweeps us away as a flood of water wipes all things from its path.  We are no more permanent than dreams partially remembered and quickly forgotten.  We are like grass that is fresh in the morning but after cut down by the sickle, dried up at night.  There is such a great difference between us and the eternal God.  Sons of dust, inconsequential and finite beings we are while he is eternal creator and Lord of all.

As if the news is not bad enough, Moses goes on.  Our dying is the fruit of God's anger with our sin.  As Paul says it so succinctly, "The wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23).  God's wrath against us which is exhibited in our dying is the cause of much dismay.  All our plans and work and ambitions are crushed under this fruit of God's wrath: death.  There is no escape from God's gaze.  He sees all our sins.  He has placed all our iniquities before his face.  All of our days are lived under the threat of death, the just curse of God's perfect anger against sin.  The span of our life is but trouble and sorrow, these days are soon gone and we fly away like sparks from a campfire that quickly burn out as they float into the night sky.

What shall we do in the face of these awful realities?  First, Moses recognizes that most of us pay no attention to the awful reality that we inhabit.  Few take serious the power of God's anger or fear God in proportion to his wrath.  We live as if our lives will not end, as if tomorrow will be like today, as if wrath will never have to be face.  So we should each one ask God to us wise hearts that "number our days", that is, that take serious the fact that God could justly, at any time say "Return to dust".  We should live as if we are going to die and we are going to have to face this God who is full of anger due to our sins.

Ah, but also, not only must we take serious who we are dealing with and how brief is our life but we must remember that this eternal God is a gracious God to whom we can go for relief.  So before God tells you to return you should tell him to return.  Do you see that in v. 13?  "Return, O Yahweh!  How long?  Have pity on your servants." " O promise making God of Israel return to us before we return to dust.  Do not wait any longer.  Take pity upon poor miserable sinners like us."

What is it that Moses most desperately desires?  What would the Lord do if her were to take pity?  "Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love that we may rejoice and be glad all our days."  This is the greatest need of every human heart: to be satisfied with the great, unfailing love of God for sinners made known in the person and the work of Jesus Christ.  The only way to find true, everlasting joy is to have God graciously, contrary to what we deserve satisfy our hearts with his unfailing love made known in Jesus.  There is no love of God for the sinner apart from Christ because Christ alone has taken up the wrath and anger that all who trust in him deserve.  Thus we need God to show us this wonderful love and then satisfy our hearts with this love alone.  Nothing can satisfy because all else is temporary pleasure.  But with Jesus is eternal pleasures at God's right hand.

Moses continues: Make us glad with this unfailing love for as many days as you have afflicted us, for as many years as we have seen trouble.  We ask the God who sends the trouble to also, graciously, satisfy our hearts with his love for as long as he has troubled us so that the trouble becomes but a dim memory and forgotten in the pleasures of his love for us.  Here is a psalm and a prayer for one like me who will be living with more sense, I hope, of the imminence of my death.  Might God use this knowledge to give me a heart of wisdom which seeks all the more to be satisfied in the love of God for a miserable sinner like me.