“Life Is a Gift Given One Day at a Time”

Psalm 90:1-12

“All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades; bit the word of our God will stand forever.”

Those words from Isaiah 40 echo verses five and six in today’s text: “You sweep them away; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning; in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers.” As one commentary on the text puts it, “The theme here is God’s eternity and mankind’s mortality. God is infinite, and humans are finite, God is mighty; humanity is frail. God is holy; people are sinners… Here faith deals with the brevity of human life… The important thing is for people to live wisely and well, with a sense of purpose.” Thus wrote the psalmist, “So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart.” And thus John Calvin was led to write, “… we foolishly imagine that we shall nestle in this world forever.”

God is infinite, might, and holy. We are finite, frail, and sinners. God is from everlasting to everlasting. We are like grass that grows for a while only to wither away. God goes on forever. We turn back to dust. God’s time is immeasurable. Ours ticks away second by second until it’s gone. We are born to die.

Sometimes people deal with this reality by way of cynical resignation. A friend wrote on Face Book last week, “Life [stinks].” My immediate response was, “And then you die.” But I went on to remind her that this life is the only one we have. Each day is a new beginning. Meanwhile consider all that is good in your life. Her response was silence.

But this life is the only one we get. As the old bumper sticker tells us, “[It] is not a rehearsal.” Folks, this is it. As I sort of said about something else two weeks ago, “Deal with it.” Let’s take that a bit further. There is more than one way to deal with the finiteness of life. I just mentioned my friend’s cynical resignation. That is one choice we can make. Another is the “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die approach.” Life’s short; so let’s party. That only works for a little while, and if it goes on long enough, we can come to the end of our days and look back on our lives with regret, grieving for all those wasted years.

We are all sinners. That is a given. None of us is righteous, no not even one. We all sin and fall short of the glory of God. To some extent even the best lived human life is sinful. Our holiness can never touch that of our Lord. But some ways of living are more sinful than others, including cynical resignation. What a waste of God’s good gifts. And as the psalm makes clear God doesn’t take kindly to our sinning. Wrote the psalmist, “For we are consumed by your anger; by your wrath we are overwhelmed. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your countenance. For all our days pass away under your wrath…”

We only live for a little while, and because of our sinfulness, we spend our days under the dark cloud of God’s wrath. Again, some folks deal with that by way of a cynical or even fearful resignation, always believing that the other shoe is about to drop. Some folks try to blot this reality out of their minds by way of drugs, alcohol, meaningless sex, work-a-holism, shopping sprees, trips to Vegas, and empty hours of mindless entertainment, to mention only a few. They take that eat, drink, and be merry thing to the extreme.

Some spend a lifetime timidly or selfishly hoarding their talents. Others spend it wasting them; in both cases being consumed by the anger and frustration voiced in verses 9 and 10: “For all our days pass away under your wrath; our years come to an end like a sigh. The days of our lives are seventy years, perhaps eighty, if we are strong; even then their span is only toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.”

A truth that they ignore is that we are all of us creations of God. He creates us in love. He watches over us in love. Even his wrath is an expression of love. Out of that love he became one of us in the person of his Son Jesus. In the person of Jesus he took upon himself his own wrath. He loves us enough to die for us on a cross. He wants us to have life and have it abundantly.

What is abundant life but counting our days and living them wisely? Putting ourselves in the proper perspective of a right relationship between the created and the Creator. Remembering that we are not the center of the universe. Measuring our finiteness against the infinity that is God’s. Comparing our sinfulness to the holiness of God. Not to become cynical or fatalistic. Not to run from our limitations, but to embrace them.

Wrote Kristen Johnson in her commentary on today’s text, “Our lives are impacted not only by brevity but by human sinfulness, which calls forth [in verses 7-11] a just and righteous response from God. In light of this reality, the psalmist turns to prayer in verse 12, asking that God teach us to receive the days we have been given as a gift from God. This, in turn, will enable us to live our lives with wisdom, as we acknowledge our human limitations and turn to depend upon our everlasting God.”

As I’m getting older, only eight years and counting away from the seventy predicted in verse 10, I am becoming more and more aware of human limitations, especially my own. I no longer have the luxury of foolishly imagining that I shall nestle in this world forever. In recent months Sandy and I have started talking about grave plots and tombstones. Death is inevitable. Nothing of this earth lasts forever.

This has been brought home to me in a variety of ways in the past few days. In this past Tuesday’s episode of NCIS Tony Danozo, usually the immature jokester of his unit is sobered by his experience of the aftermath of a plane crash. He’s moved to begin writing his bucket list, those things he hopes to do before he dies, before his allotted days run out.

Last Thursday we lost Mabel Munson, her life being cut short of seventy years by cancer. Tomorrow I will be officiating at her funeral. Although as a Christian and pastor I will proclaim the sure hope of resurrection, I will also have to remind myself and the rest of those gathered in this sanctuary that death is real. There is no denying it, no matter how hard we try. And we modern Americans try really hard to do so.

Finally there was the firing of Joe Paterno at Penn State. The lesson in that is that no matter how secure we think we are in a position or how revered we might be for our accomplishments, we can lose all of it in a matter of hours. One way or another, our sins, even those of omission, will catch up with us in painful ways. All those things we think will last forever, or at least a lifetime, can come crashing down around our feet. All human accomplishment eventually dries up and blows away. The grass does wither. The flower does fade.

Our only real hope is in the Lord who made heaven and earth. Our only security comes by way of making the Lord our God our dwelling place. There is no abundant life either here or in the life to come outside the saving grace of Jesus Christ. Our days are numbered. They are a gift we receive one day, one moment, one second, one breath at a time. We must accept them with gratitude and use them wisely.

I will close with some words from an anonymous meditation: “Learning to live in the here and now is a way of centering ourselves and bringing the world and other people into focus. If we experience fully what is happening every moment, our lives will expand and deepen and become enriched by a vivid sense of being alive.”

This life is not a rehearsal. It’s the real thing. Let’s not waste it on sin or cynicism. Let’s live it abundantly as only those in Christ can. Amen.