Living Life In The Face Of Death

The Psalmist tells us in verse 10 that our span of days maybe seventy or eighty years, some of us here might be on overtime already. But the Psalmist isn’t being prescriptive about things. The Psalmist is being descriptive; back in the days of this Psalm it was very rare with their level of health awareness and hygiene. Today we have better knowledge of foods, medicine, operating techniques, today with our knowledge and technology we can delay the effects of sin, of God’s wrath, in our lives, but even still it isn’t forever. We may ten, twenty, even thirty years on to the average person’s life, but it is still little compared to eternity.

Is the Psalmist saying that all these things are a direct result of God’s judgment on our sins? Do I suffer cancer because of my sin? Do two people get divorced because God was angry with their sin? No. This week my wife went to court with a friend whose husband left her, had a child with another women, while they were still married. It wasn’t her fault. She was doing her best to live a God-centred life. But sin is in the world, and God’s wrath allows its effects to work in the world. Although he didn’t just leave it there did he? He sent Jesus and although Jesus death on the cross pays the price for our sins, the complete cure doesn’t come when we accept Christ. The complete cure comes when we finally enter into the fullness of God’s presence.

For some of us that might not be too many years away. For some of us it might come suddenly, for others over a longer period of time. I certainly hope I have many more years with my wife, Leni, and any children God might grant to us. But whatever the effects of sin that have affected our life we need to remember that it won’t be forever and that there is an end. It is this that the Psalmist encourages us to go on and consider. Let’s read verse 12.

The Psalmist teaches us here that if we are to count our days aright that we will have a heart of wisdom. What does it mean to count our days aright? Does it mean that we figure our future life expectancy? A few months ago there was an excel spreadsheet that people were emailing to each other. You plug in all the details and it tells you your life expectancy. Should we use that to literally count our days and figure out that I have 15,345 days left, or whatever number it might be? I don’t think so. In the context of this Psalm I think it means for us to remember the contrast between our limited number of days, days that are under God’s wrath in this sin affected world, and the timeless nature of God, the God who created us, who wants to have relationship with us, the God who is our home, our eternal home. I suspect that this is something we tend to focus on more as we get older.

A friend of mine was talking with the Psychologist of the Australian Rugby team, the Wallabies a few months ago. This man was talking about the current team, particularly how some of them who are more important to the team are starting to get older. They are now starting to think about how they will be remembered in the history of rugby. Will they be remembered well? Or will they be remembered as merely average? As strange as it might seem this is actually having a negative impact on their play. They are now getting more worried about making the big plays and as the tension builds they make more mistakes. The implication being when they were younger they were more focussed on enjoying the game and the tension then wasn’t as great, the plays came more easily, the won more of the close games.