Why focus on your death?
Moses talks in Psalm 90 of the eternity of God and the frailty of man:
“The days of our lives are seventy years;
And if by reason of strength they are eighty years,
Yet their boast is only labor and sorrow;
For it is soon cut off, and we fly away.
11 Who knows the power of Your anger?
For as the fear of You, so is Your wrath.
12 So teach us to number our days,
That we may gain a heart of wisdom.
13 Return, O Lord! How long?
And have compassion on Your servants.
14 Oh, satisfy us early with Your mercy,
That we may rejoice and be glad all our days!
15 Make us glad according to the days in which You have afflicted us,
The years in which we have seen evil.
16 Let Your work appear to Your servants,
And Your glory to their children.
17 And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us,
And establish the work of our hands for us;
Yes, establish the work of our hands.”
Psalms 90:10–17
I write this as I sit on another airplane bound for London for work that starts next week and watching a movie on Mount Everest. If you’ve ever seen the movie Everest you’ll understand just how frail this human life really is. Men have attempted and succeeded at climbing to the summit of Everest; and many have failed and lost their lives on the side of its frozen face. Climb above a certain altitude and the oxygen is too thin to keep you alive…you literally start dying. Catch the wrong storm and you can be stuck and frozen to death, or worse, swept off the side of the mountain. Without the right team, right equipment, right health, right weather, and just the right timing, making it to the summit just won’t happen.
It’s not that reaching the summit isn’t a huge human achievement, it is! But this is one of the pinnacles of human achievement and the motivation for doing so is to conquer the self and to do something no one else has done…but still it’s an achievement that only goes so far. Even if we don’t try and summit Everest we can expect to only live into our 70’s, 80's and if by reason of strength into our 90’s and beyond these days — not a long time. But this letter isn’t about dying or just how frail our lives are as humans and how quickly we can be gone.
Moses has specific prayers to God in this Psalms that should be our same prayer when we realize just how frail our lives can be:
Teach us to number our days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom — help us to see just how short we have on this earth and gain the one thing that lasts…wisdom.
Return O Lord, how long? and have compassion on your servants! — Return to us God even though you wait long; and have compassion on us because our lives are fleeting!
Oh, satisfy us early with Your mercy, That we may rejoice and be glad all our days! — When we experience your mercy it causes us to rejoice and be glad, please give us this mercy early and often.
Make us glad according to the days in which You have afflicted us, The years in which we have seen evil. — We will see trials in this life and we will see evil, but make us glad despite all of this.
Let Your work appear to Your servants, And Your glory to their children. — Let us see the incredible work you are doing upon this earth, let us see how you are bringing many sons to glory, and to see your glory as this gives us hope.
And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, And establish the work of our hands for us; Yes, establish the work of our hands. — Let us see your beauty in our days and let that be upon us, and bless the work we do with our hands, and with each other, and in this world. Yes please bless the work of our hands in everything we touch, especially that of the work you are doing.
You see, even though Moses talks about the shortness of days he prays a prayer full of hope and strength and joy during those days! It doesn’t mean that it will always be a long life as some die early, it doesn’t mean you won’t see trials, it doesn’t mean you won’t see evil, and it doesn’t mean you won’t have to toil in work your entire life. But it does mean that there can be real, authentic joy, hope, mercy and strength during those days. And that we can see the work that God is doing on this earth and take heart, and also be strengthened in the work we do with our hands as well. In a real way that opens our eyes to the work God is doing on this earth and where that work will lead to.
“It is not death that a man should fear, but rather he should fear never beginning to live.” Marcus Aurelius
At first it seems morbid to focus on your death — isn’t that being all doom and gloom and only looking at the negative? This quote from one of the great stoic philosophers Marcus Aurelius sums up the point of why Moses says this. Yes, remind yourself that you will die one day…so that you live now EVERY day. The stoic idea of always thinking about your death is the same as Moses saying “teach us to number our days”. And the result is to live each day, build wisdom each day, work hard each day, find our joy in God each day. So in actuality, it’s not a morbid thing to focus on the limit of our days — it’s something that should actually spur us to live every moment of our lives. This is what the prayer of Moses is about.
Achieving the summit of Everest must be an amazing and exhilarating experience…but achieving the Kingdom and the crown that awaits after the grind of this life will be the most incredible experience you can imagine…beyond compare! Moses prayed these things in Psalms 90, and for us to number our days, so that we ask these things of God so that this life is not an empty life, but one that sees joy, strength and hope for today and that coming day.
