25 Pentecost Yr A, 19/11/2023

Ps 90:1-8, 12 

Pastor Garth Wehrfritz-Hanson

“Life is short, live a full, meaningful, wise life, with the time God gives you”

Psalm 90 is chosen by some people and pastors to be read at funerals. Indeed, it is an appropriate Psalm for funerals, since one of the important messages of Psalm 90 reminds us that life is short, therefore live a full, meaningful, wise life, with the time God gives you. The superscription of Psalm 90 states that it is: “A Prayer of Moses, the man of God.” If this psalm does go back to the time of Moses, then it is one of the older psalms. The opening two verses certainly would have been a prayer that Moses could have prayed—given the fact that he and the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness, without a home for 40 years. The NRSV states that: “LORD, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.” Instead of “dwelling place,” the REB renders it like this: the LORD has been “our refuge throughout all generations.” The GNT puts it like this: “O Lord, you have always been our home.” Most likely Moses would have found great comfort in trusting that the LORD was his true home, dwelling and refuge. So too, for you and me, ultimately God is our true, eternal home, dwelling place and refuge. 

As the psalm continues, Moses contrasts the shortness of human life with God who is eternal. Moses, during those 40 years of wandering in the wilderness witnessed the deaths of the Israelites—some of them most likely had a short life, and died young. 

How long do you think you’ll live? What is your life expectancy?

One day in seminary, Dr. Elliot made this statement: “Most people have a pretty good idea of how old they’ll be when they die, and the likely cause of death.”

He was a psychologist. He taught Pastoral Care and Counseling. Sure enough, he went around the room and asked every student to say how old they thought they’d be when they died, and what the cause of death would be. Some predicted a fairly short lifespan, dying of cancer or a heart attack, because that ran in their family; others predicted a ripe old age, because that ran in their family.

Someone once said, “The secret of longevity is to have old parents.” How long do you think you’ll live? God is eternal; we are not. In the grand scheme of things, our time on earth at best is but a blip on the radar screen. 

When it comes to death and dying, we all live with a certain amount of denial. Oh, we know it’s going to happen; still, it’s hard to fathom. Whether we think we’re immune or invincible or that it simply doesn’t apply to us, it’s hard for us to take our mortality seriously. 

Only God is eternal. No one knew this better than Isaac Watts, who wrote his hymn, “O God, Our Help in Ages Past,” which is a paraphrase of Psalm 90.

“Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all our years away;

They fly forgotten, as a dream dies at the op’ning day.

O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come,

Still be our guide while troubles last and our eternal home.” (#632 Evangelical Lutheran Worship)

So, what can you do about it? I heard a preacher say one time: “Plan for tomorrow as if you’re going to live forever; live today as it were your last.” Moses prayed simply, “So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart.”¹ Or as the REB renders it: “So make us know how few are our days, that our minds may learn wisdom.” Or as the GNT puts it: “Teach us how short our life is, so that we may become wise.” 

One Christian who took the words of Psalm 90 very seriously was the founder of the Methodist Church, John Wesley. 

Nearly every minute of Wesley’s long life was carefully planned. For 60 years he always rose at 4:00 A.M. and almost always went to bed promptly at 10:00 P.M. For 50 years he preached at 5:00 A.M. He learned to use every small piece of the day for learning and prayer. He read and wrote while riding horseback. How did he do it? “I rode with slack rein,” he explained. In the more than 40 years he spent on horseback, Wesley traveled more than a quarter of a million miles and preached 42,000 sermons.

His incredibly disciplined life allowed him time to write history books on England and Rome as well as volumes on logic and health. He prepared grammars on Greek, French, and English and completed an excellent English dictionary. He even wrote hymns, though brother Charles was the master hymn writer, penning more than 6000 hymns of beautiful poetry, often for an illiterate public.

At age 77, Wesley’s vigour remained. He rode 100 miles in 48 hours, a feat he duplicated 10 years later. He complained at 83 that he could not write for more than 15 hours without hurting his eyes. At 86 he traveled throughout Ireland for nine weeks, preaching 100 sermons in 60 towns, often in the open air.

Though we will remember him for his writing and his vigorous stands on social issues (he was very vocal in his opposition to slavery), Wesley will be best remembered for his organizational genius and his passion to know and experience the love of God. “We are saved by faith,” he declared thousands of times. “God is gracious and loving.” This message and his fervent desire for people to live righteous lives is a word that the church in our own day still needs to hear.²

Moses, in praying this psalm, realized that even though life on this earth can be short in contrast to eternity, God still has a plan and a purpose for us. God wants us to love and serve him and our neighbour even in old age—which Moses did up til his death at 120 years. 

Psychologist Erik Erikson has written that people approaching the last chapters of their lives have to choose between stagnation and generativity. He defines stagnation as thinking only about ourselves. How do I feel? What aches? Who calls me, and who ignores me? Generativity is worrying about the next generation and what sort of world we are leaving them. Needless to say, generativity is the healthy choice. It pulls us out of ourselves and gives us a role to play in the world.³

May we share the gift of wisdom with the young, by encouraging and nurturing them in the faith. A wise heart and mind is a gift from God. It involves being aware of God at work in the world and in our lives—teaching us through prayer and a willingness to keep learning, how to live in accordance with God’s will for us, valuing each day, each month, each year as a gift from God to serve and love our neighbours. 

I would like to leave you with this inspiring quotation, attributed to musician Pau (Pablo) Casals, when he was 93: “Age is a relative matter. If you continue to work and to absorb beauty in the world, you find age does not necessarily mean getting old. At least not in the ordinary sense. I feel many things more intensely than ever and for me my life gets more fascinating.” 

1 Philip W. McLarty, “A Matter of Life and Death,” at:

2 Wm. R. White, Stories For Telling: A Treasury for Christian Storytellers (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1986), pp. 62-63.

3 Harold Kushner, Living a Life That Matters (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), p. 132.