Today’s Thought for the Day comes from Psalm 90.  This psalm presents a vivid contrast between the eternal nature of God and the brief, temporal nature of man.  The psalmist describes God (vv. 2 & 4):

“² Before the mountains were brought forth,
Or ever You had formed the earth and the world,
Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.”

And,

“⁴ For a thousand years in Your sight
Are like yesterday when it is past,
And like a watch in the night.”

God exists independent of time.  In 2 Peter 3:8, Peter writes: “But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”  Some mistakenly believe this is God’s formula for measuring time.  That’s not the point at all.  Time is meaningless to God!  On the contrary, as men we are prisoners of time.  In verse 10 the psalmist writes:

“¹⁰ 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.”

As human beings we are very proficient at suppressing the knowledge of our own mortality.  We know we are mortal, but most of the time we act as if we are going to live forever.  The stoic Roman philosopher Seneca once wrote: “It’s not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.” We need to stop wasting our limited time by coming to grips with our own mortality and “make hay while the sun shines,” so to speak.  We need to take advantage of the short time God has allotted us and never forget He guarantees not even one tomorrow!  As James writes (Jas. 4:13-16):

“¹³ Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit’; ¹⁴ whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow.  For what is your life?  It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. ¹⁵ Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.’ ¹⁶ But now you boast in your arrogance.  All such boasting is evil.”

When we suppress our own mortality, we are repressing a valuable gift God has given us.  Solomon tells us God “has put eternity in [our] hearts” (Eccl. 3:11).  We behave like fools when we stifle that and mimic the attitude of the rich fool in Luke chapter 12.  He was convinced he would live forever to enjoy the fruits of his labor.  In verse 19 he said, “And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry.’”  He made a most egregious error!  God had an entirely different plan!  “But God said to him, ‘Fool!  This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided?’” (v. 20)  The rich fool experienced what the Scottish poet, Robert Burns, wrote:  “the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”  The rich fool’s plan and God’s plan were not in synch.  Sadly, most of us live like the rich fool.  We make plans that eliminate God or (at best) we keep Him on the periphery of our life.

In verse 12 the psalmist asks God:

“¹² So teach us to number our days,
That we may gain a heart of wisdom.”

Let us not be foolish and make the grievous error of the rich fool by not including God in our life.  In fact, He must be at the very center of this life if we expect to gain eternal life (Matt. 16:25-26):

“²⁵ For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. ²⁶ For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?  Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”

Let us heed the wise words of the sweet psalmist David (Psa. 39:4):

“⁴ ‘Lord, make me to know my end,
And what is the measure of my days,
That I may know how frail I am.’”

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