Psalm 90 Realism for Ash Wednesday and Life

Psalm 90 is an incredibly wise meditation for Ash Wednesday, Lent and all of life.

During Lent, Christians meditate on their fragile, short lives. On Ash Wednesday, we put ashes on our head as a visible gesture that reminds us of the dust that we will return to. As humans, we are but dust and ashes. We consider our sins and the fact that we will must stand before God at the end, and we repent of the things that we’ve done in dust and ashes.

Where I live, Ash Wednesday comes in the middle of the long, bleak winter, and it fits the mood of the weather perfectly. I live near Lake Michigan, which causes non-stop lake-effect clouds and snow during the winter. We can go for weeks with no sunshine.

Do you remember the movie “Groundhog Day” where Bill Murray is forced to re-live a single dreary February day ad infinitum? Here, it feels like Groundhog Day for months at a time.

Returning to Dust

Listen to the words of Psalm 90:3 and how they fit Ash Wednesday:

You return man to dust (daka) and say, “Return, O children of man!”

Here, the writer is deliberately hinting Genesis 3:19, which is God’s decree to Adam after the fall:

By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground (adamah),
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust (afar), and to dust (afar) you shall return.

The verb “return” is used in Psalm 90:3 twice, just like in Genesis 3:19. In that passage it explains why we return to dust – because the ground (adamah) was where Adam came from. We are fashioned out of worthless, lowly, dirt!

Interestingly, in Psalm 90:3 the word in Hebrew for dust is not the usual one, afar (עפר), but daka, (דכא) which has even more depressing connotations. It means “crushed,” “broken,” or “destroyed.” Dust is formless and can be made into something, but daka still bears the resemblance of the thing that it came from, that reminds onlookers at the loss of something that has been created for a good purpose.

A perfect picture of this is the homes lost in the recent fires near Los Angeles, multi-million dollar palaces reduced to utter ruins. What a tragedy! We mourn when we see broken, crushed remains of something that was once lovely and whole and useful. Gloomily, the psalm reminds us that we will all someday be reduced to decay and death.

There is hope even here though. One other place that daka is used is in the word “brokenhearted.” And God is especially near to the brokenhearted and crushed in spirit (Psalm 34:18).

Blooming for Just a Day

Psalm 90 goes on to remind us of how fleeting our lives are, from God’s eternal perspective. It says,

For in Your sight a thousand years
are like yesterday that has passed,
like a watch of the night.
You engulf men in sleep;
at daybreak they are like grass that renews itself;
at daybreak it flourishes anew;
by dusk it withers and dries up. (4-6)

The psalmist invokes the image of caper bush blossoms in Israel that bloom gloriously in the morning but are limp by noon and completely withered by late afternoon. Each blossom is utterly fleeting.

You might be surprised at what the psalmist says causes us to grow weary with age and die:

For we are brought to an end by your anger;
by your wrath we are dismayed.
You have set our iniquities before you,
our secret sins in the light of your presence.
For all our days pass away under your wrath;
we bring our years to an end like a sigh.
The years of our life are seventy,
or even by reason of strength eighty;
yet their span is but toil and trouble;
they are soon gone, and we fly away.
Who considers the power of your anger,
and your wrath according to the fear of you?
So teach us to number our days
that we may get a heart of wisdom. (7-12)

This psalm gives a bleak answer about why life is so difficult – it’s because of the consequences of sin. Day after day we are worn down by life’s painful realities. Remember how Adam will face thorns and weeds and get food by the sweat of his brow, and it will gradually wear him out until he dies.

That’s exactly what we experience in life too. Things break down, arguments happen, the boss yells at you, you lose your job. Disease strikes and our bodies age and weaken over time. We can just expect that life will contain trouble and sorrow.

If this punishment seems overly harsh, consider that we are joining God in the grief that he feels. In Genesis 6:6, when God sees the unending wickedness of humankind, he is grieved to his heart and regrets having made us. In Hebrew, the word for pain or grief is itzavon, (eetz-a-VONE).

At the Fall, the consequence of sin is that Adam’s labor to produce food will be full of itzavon (Gen. 3:17). Similarly, Eve will labor in pain (itzavon) in bearing children (Gen. 3:16). I think this must also include raising sinful children, who give their parents pain over the years.

So the weariness and difficulties we experience in life is only what God experiences. Now we see why God is near to the brokenhearted, because he experiences this same grief himself.

Our wise response to the reality of our lives is to carefully count our days, realizing how quickly they will speed by. What things should take priority? Are we getting worthwhile things done, or wasting time?

Relent and Have Mercy on us, Oh Lord

At this point the psalmist changes mood and writes,

Return, O LORD! How long?
Have pity on your servants!
Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,
that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us,
and for as many years as we have seen evil.

Notice that the psalmist hasn’t asked God to take away the his decree of a short life, or the toil and difficulty and sorrow. But it says, let us see your steadfast love so that we can sing for joy in the midst of affliction.

The psalm concludes with important realism for life by pointing out two ways where we will find joy in the midst of dealing with difficulty day after day after day. First in verse 16 it says,

Let your deeds be shown to your servants,
and your glorious power to their children.

As a Christian, I pray daily for friends and family. I ask the Lord for things, and it’s not that uncommon when I see God answer my prayers in obvious ways. When I see God’s hand in events, when he turns up a friend right at the right time, each one of those little “God sightings” gives me so much encouragement that I know that the Lord is watching over me in his loving concern in spite of everything.

We also have this encouragement when we celebrate God’s great deeds in Scripture, in his covenant with Israel, in the coming of Christ, and in all of his promises that he’s made that he’s fulfilled so far. Remembering his deeds and his glory can give us encouragement and hope.

Establish the Work of our Hands

In the last line of Psalm 90 it says,

Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us,
and establish the work of our hands upon us;
yes, establish the work of our hands! (17)

What this line means is, “Father, Lord, please give us worthy things to do with our lives, and help us accomplish the good tasks you’ve given us.” Allow us to celebrate our accomplishments that serve you and bless humanity. This is the reward for patience and persistence despite difficulty.

We watch the Lord work through our lives to help bring redemption to the world. We are working toward tikkun olam, repairing creation. We are sharing the love of Christ, healing wounded hearts and building places and families where people can flourish. We are bringing the world to a point where God’s new creation will break in.

What kind of things can we do that are meaningful and worthwhile, biblically?

For one, raising a family. We all know that it’s frustrating and painful at times to raise children. They talk back. They rebel and disappoint us. But when they grow up, most parents are deeply pleased to see the fruit of their hard work in raising their children.

My Mom used to say, “Having adult children is the reward of all the years you put into them.” They will be the closest friends you will ever have, and they will take care of you as you grow old, just as you cared for them when they were young.

Having a family is actually the very first thing that God commands humankind in the Bible, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth!” (Genesis 1:28) Some of us, like me for instance, didn’t realize there was a command to do this until we were past childbearing. I have never been married or had children. Personally, what I do is write books and articles online. “My books are my babies” is what I say. The Lord also gave a command to teach our children the scriptures (Deut. 6:7)

You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

Parents, theoretically, are supposed to be doing this at all times. But of course, most parents don’t do have time or knowledge to this. So I help adults learn the Scriptures and teach them to their children. So my books are the “works” of my hands.

We do worthwhile things even in manual labor too. Even in constructing a house, you are building something that is useful and worthwhile and needed by humans who are precious to God. Building a house (or any useful thing) is something you can smile about and say hurray. Hurray! God has used me to make this good thing.

Some days I get stuck on something trivial — a website glitch or some little problem that just can’t be fixed. That’s the ultimate frustration, when days are utterly wasted on nothing. That’s why we pray for God to establish the works of our hands.

Teach us to Number our Days

Ultimately Psalm 90 teaches us that we need to count our our days, and realize that certain things can be done certain things can’t. And, that whatever we choose to do, we need to keep at it. We need to start right away and keep working away until we get things done, despite whether the work is dull, tiresome or repetitive. Ultimately, what gives us long-term happiness in life is to see our life’s labors bear fruit.

Viktor Frankl, the Jewish author who endured Auschwitz and wrote of Man’s Search for Meaning¹, points out that seeing the purpose of our efforts allows us not to fear getting old. Knowing what we’ve accomplished is a source of happiness and dignity for people in their advanced age. He writes,

In the past, nothing is irretrievably lost, but rather, on the contrary, everything is irrevocably stored and treasured. To be sure, people tend to see only stubble fields of transitoriness but overlook and forget the full granaries of the past into which they have brought the harvest of their lives: the deeds done, the loves loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with courage and dignity.

From this, one may see that there is no reason to pity old people. It is true that the old have no opportunities, no possibilities in the future. But they have more than that. Instead of possibilities in the future, they have realities in the past – the potentialities they have actualized, the meanings they have fulfilled, the values they have realized – and nothing and nobody can ever remove these assets from the past. It is that which warrants the indelible quality of the dignity of man.

~~~~~

1 Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959), 122-123. (This is a classic book that transformed my way of thinking about life. I’ve also written about it my article, “The Meaning of Life, According to Jesus.”)

[Photos: Wikipedia, Free Malaysia Today, Wasfi Akab]