Considering Life

Psalm 90:4–6, 10

SNAP A TELESCOPIC LENS ON your perspective for the next few minutes. Pull yourself up close enough to see the real you. Pore over your own pores. Study what you see. Like a physician giving you a physical. Like an artist painting your portrait. Like a biographer writing your story.

From the reflection in your mental mirror, pay close attention to your life. Try your best to examine the inner “you” based on time. Time, that elusive, slippery phantom which swims smoothly with the current, only rarely coming up for air. Time, that haunting, endless melody which only rarely sings a solo. Get a good look at yourself with your arm around time. Makes a difference, doesn’t it? It may be rather difficult.

Seems to me the only way we can carry out this project is to look in two directions . . . back, then ahead. In many ways, what we see in our past and visualize in our future determines how we view ourselves today . . . right now. That depth-yielding third dimension we call “the present.”

Psalm 90 is loaded with word-picture reminders of the brevity of life. Read the psalmist’s words carefully . . . they’re like the words of the poet.

For you, a thousand years are as a passing day, as brief as a few night hours. You sweep people away like dreams that disappear. They are like grass that springs up in the morning. In the morning it blooms and flourishes, but by evening it is dry and withered. . . . Seventy years are given to us! Some even live to eighty. But even the best years are filled with pain and trouble; soon they disappear, and we fly away.

PSALM 90:4–6, 10

Standing arm in arm with time brings a subtle, perhaps painful, reminder that we aren’t getting any younger. Walk with God. Make the most of your day by pursuing Him, strolling humbly and joyfully by His side. Do what you know must be done to place Christ at the center of everything. Yes . . . everything. Leave the counting of years to Him. Let Him handle the length while you pay attention to the depth.