Teach Us to Number Our Days

Today I visited my mom, who happens to be 96 this year. Over the last few months, her world is shrinking. She used to get around by herself, with the aid of a walker, and some help from time to time from family members. Something happened a little while ago through which she lost much of the strength in her legs. She no longer walks, but can transfer from chair to wheel chair with assistance. Much more than the loss of strength is the shrinking of her cognitive world. She still remembers me, but sometimes will ask odd questions that shows she has trouble keeping straight some of the long-term connections in her life. For example, a week or so ago, she asked my sister, a long-time member of our church, who her pastor was. Today, she told me she realized she was behind in her diary — she likes to keep track of the little events of her life because I think she knows she can’t trust her memory. “I’ve got to get with it,” she said.

Well, that’s a familiar story to many. Many readers can identify with their own family members who suddenly seem to drift away, seemingly shutting down their life in an inexorable decline. For some it is a long, slow, difficult journey. I am thankful that my mom still knows me, and that, as she says, “You’re number one!” (I’m the eldest of her kids.) So far, we still have that.

As I drove down from her house, I thought about the way life changes and how easy it is to slip from relative strength to profound weakness.

In Psalm 90, Moses asked the Lord “teach us to number our days.” (Ps 90.12) Earlier in the Psalm he stated, “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.” (v. 10)

In the first part of the Psalm, Moses talks about God in his majestic eternity (verses 1-2), then he contrasts our frailty with God’s eternity. God swiftly turns man back into dust, while a thousand years roll by like “yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.” (v. 4) Our brevity and passing come to us because of God’s wrath, as Moses says,

• “For we are consumed by thine anger…” (Ps 90.7)
• “Thou hast set our iniquities before thee…” (Ps 90.8)
• “For all our days are passed away in thy wrath…” (Ps 90.9)

Then comes the well-known verse about “threescore years and ten,” quoted above. Some may take comfort in a long life that God allows, but Moses observes that “their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.” In other words, even if God gives us seventy or eighty years (or ninety-six!), that is nothing to boast of for we all perish in the end.

Next Moses asks this piercing question:

“Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath.” (Ps 90.11)

Some versions start this verse with, “Who understands the power of Your anger…” (NASB) or “Who can really fathom the intensity of your anger?” (NET) Do we really understand that this brief life we have reflects on God’s wrath poured out on all men because of one sin? We all die. Why? Because Adam sinned, and God exacts his judgement on man because of Adam’s sin.

Having considered all this, now Moses petitions the Lord.

• “So teach us to number our days…” (Ps 90.12)
• “…let it repent thee concerning thy servants.” (Ps 90.13)
• “O satisfy us early with thy mercy…” (Ps 90.14)
• “Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil.” (Ps 90.15)
• “Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children.” (Ps 90.16)

And the final petition:

“And let the beauty of the LORD our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.” (Ps 90.17)

Kidner says, as he introduces his comments on this psalm, “In an age which was readier than our own to reflect on mortality and judgement, this psalm was an appointed reading (with 1 Cor 15) at the burial of the dead: a rehearsal of the facts of death and life which, if it was harsh at such a moment, wounded to heal.”¹

When we watch our loved ones fade away, we see the curse on Adam playing itself out yet again, as it is indeed acting on every one of us, every day. Teach us to number our days! Indeed!

We need to live our lives in such a way that they bring glory to God, if possible, every day. I thank the Lord that my mother’s Christian testimony worked in the lives of others for the glory of God. I remember how she constantly sought out young people in our town, in our neighbourhood, often in needy circumstances, who she recruited for Sunday school and church, sponsored them at camp, witnessed to them, and encouraged them. She probably can’t remember who they are if I were to ask today, but these dear people will join her singing praise to our God one day, when the Lord establishes the work of our hands forever, when the redeemed wake up to the new reality where the days will not be shortened again.

Teach us to number our days.

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Don Johnson is the pastor of Grace Baptist Church of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada.

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Photo by Josh Hild on Unsplash

1. Kidner, Psalms, vol. 2, pp. 327-328. [↩]