Frailty and Futility

A new year starts on Wednesday. And while this Wednesday will be just like so many other Wednesdays it's good for us to mark the beginning of another year. This gives us another opportunity to stop and reflect on our lives. To help you do this I'm going to take a look at a psalm. I need to warn you that the first part of this psalm, Psalm 90, is dark. Moses, who wrote it, is reflecting on life with Israel as they wander in the desert. If he had stopped only part way through this would be a rather depressing psalm. It's the second part of the psalm that gives hope in the darkness. It's because of what we read at the end of the psalm that we can be optimistic. I'm not going to read the whole psalm first. Rather, I'm going to read through it a bit at a time, commenting on each section.

Here are the opening verses.

A Prayer of Moses, the man of God. Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. ​Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

Moses begins by talking about God. This is what you might call a baseline. Moses will use what he says here to make some important comparisons. These verses deal with the question, 'Who is God?' He is a big God, a God who spans generations.  But more than that, He is the God who is from forever and to forever. This God does not grow old and pass away. He is eternal.

Moses then brings mankind into the picture. Notice the contrast.

You return man to dust and say, “Return, O children of man!” For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night. You sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning: in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers.

Moses is acknowledging a basic truth from Genesis 3, God's curse of Adam.

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

This is something that is common to all of the children of Adam. We are all cursed because of sin. We are not like God. Time for Him, even a thousand years, is nothing. But for us time is everything. Unlike God, we do grow old and pass away. We are like a dream that you don't remember or like grass that flourishes only to all too quickly wither. We are not like God. We live, and then we die. And all that remains is just dust.

Moses continues.

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.

This is one of those places where it's important to remember who wrote the piece of Scripture you're reading. Moses is reflecting here on the situation with Israel as they wander in the desert. The turning point in that journey was where God told them,

According to the number of the days in which you spied out the land, forty days, a year for each day, you shall bear your iniquity forty years, and you shall know my displeasure.

God was angry at Israel. They had rebelled against His command to conquer the land. So, for forty years they knew God's displeasure. Moses reflects on the continuing anger of God on the people he is leading. He pictures the situation with these words:

For all our days pass away under your wrath; we bring our years to an end like a sigh.

Not a pleasant way to describe someone's life and then death. Something from the poet T. S. Eliot fits here.

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but with a whimper.

Life is hard, and then it comes to a sad end. That's what Moses is saying about the Church of his day.

All this is brought together in verses 10 and 11 which are something of a summary of the first part of the psalm. Here's verse 10.

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.

Moses emphasizes the brevity of life, 70 or 80 years. What is that when compared to the eternity of God? And those years are filled with 'toil and trouble'. So, it's not just that life is short. It's also painful - if not in body then certainly in soul. And so, after a brief and hard life, we are gone. The repeated words of Ecclesiastes are appropriate.

Vanity of vanities. All is vanity.

Life is futile. It is filled with emptiness, and worse. But is that vanity taken to heart? Here's verse 11.

Who considers the power of your anger, and your wrath according to the fear of you?

Here is life. It is filled with so much that is wrong. But who really gets it? Who spends the time and effort to understand God and the situation that we are all in? Moses did but, as he acknowledges, there are pitiful few others.

Moses has just explained reality. And I think that you can see why I said that if Moses stopped here this would be a depressing psalm. The reality he has explained is dark. What he has written is not comforting. But it is accurate. After all, this is Scripture. Moses wasn't just having a hard day and over-reacted to life. This is an accurate picture of life and it needs to be dealt with. But is it? Here are three responses to the reality Moses has written about.

The first is simply to ignore it all, to hide from it. If you don't acknowledge it, it can't hurt you - or so this thinking goes. And there are different ways to try to ignore reality. Here are two quotes from Blaise Pascal which, though written centuries ago, fit today quite well.

Despite [his] afflictions man wants to be happy, only wants to be happy, and cannot help wanting to be happy. But how shall he go about it? The best thing would be to make himself immortal, but as he cannot do that, he has decided to stop thinking about it.

Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for miseries and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.

We live in a time when people don't think about the things that Moses has written about. Instead of thinking about life and what is really going on, we are a distracted culture. We give ourselves to all sorts of things so that we won't have to confront the futility of so much of what we do. We hide from reality. But reality has this nasty habit of drawing attention to itself from time to time. It's harder to ignore it then.

Here's another response, and this one is popular at times like New Year's Day. It goes something like this. 'I'm going to try harder. I see that my life isn't working as well as I'd like. But I can fix that. I can make adjustments here and there. I can make life work better.' This is another example of the naïve American can-do spirit. But consider the reality that is confronting these unrealistic people: the frailty of not just our bodies but also of our minds, the futility of life lived under the wrath of God. Who can fix those things? There will be some who will achieve a kind of success. They will lose those ten pounds or lower their cholesterol or become more disciplined with their time or any number of goals that they have set for themselves. These will become proud of their achievement. They will tell themselves - and usually those around them - that they have reached important goals. But they live in a dream world. They have actually done nothing to change the basic facts of reality: frailty and futility. They are still on the way to becoming dust.

Then, there will be those who will set their sights on some goals but who will fail to reach them. They will see that, though they have tried really hard, nothing has changed. Life is still frailty and futility. Having tried and failed they give up. These have no hope.

So, in response to the reality that Moses has described, we will have the distracted, the proud and the despairing. That goes a long way to describe the culture around us.

But Moses, who sees the darkness of reality, does not respond in these ways. This is where Moses responds as the Christian that he is. This is where the psalm displays light. Moses prays and makes some requests of God. Here's the first.

So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.

Moses asks God to teach him and all God's people so that we get it. Moses prays that we all get how brief this life is, that we all get how frail we are. We get the futility of it all. Moses wants us to get this so that we would become wise. Wisdom is simply insight into how to live well. And key to that is Jesus. But Jesus as the solution to the problem will not make a whole lot of sense without first understanding the problem. Jesus isn't about getting a ticket into heaven. He's about living well, in this world, in the midst of frailty and futility. Jesus is about seeing reality and responding well. Moses asks for the ability to see reality as it is so that we can see reality as it's supposed to be.

But before that can happen something else has to occur. Here’s Moses next request.

​Return, O Lord! How long? Have pity on your servants!

This is a cry for compassion. Moses knows that life is impossible without God. He also knows that a sinner like himself asking for compassion is not asking for too much.

As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.

The God of Israel is a compassionate God. So, Moses asks Him to return in compassion to His people. And that returning is necessary if you remember the situation in Israel at the time. God had turned away from His rebellious people, as He should have. He still does that. But He will return to His people as soon as they repent and come again to Jesus. He is compassionate. It is only as He returns that the people of God can come to understand reality and gain a heart of wisdom. Repentance is always necessary.

Next request:

Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

Moses makes a large request here. He doesn't ask for a bit of a reprieve from the darkness, just a morsel to hold off the hunger pangs. He wants it all. He wants the full meal with all the trimmings. In a world that is so dark, Moses wants to be satisfied. So, that's what he prays for. And what is it that will satisfy? God's steadfast love. There is a Hebrew word translated simply as 'love'. This is not that word. This word is different. This word is about a love that is assured because of promises made and guaranteed by covenant. Moses is telling God, 'You have promised by covenant to love us. I know that we have broken our covenant promises. But please have compassion and fill us with your promised love.' And the desired result of all of this? Moses asks for happiness.

He desires us to experience that happiness now. So, he asks,

Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, and for as many years as we have seen evil.

Moses is asking God to balance the scales. There has been much affliction. He desires that God send an equal amount of happiness. And that's a good request. Paul tells us, though, that just balancing the scales isn't good enough. God promises more.

For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison…

The day is coming when the toil and troubles that we deal with here will be labeled light and momentary affliction. And that's because we'll have something much bigger to compare it to: happiness forever.

Moses ends his requests by praying about work, God's work and ours.

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

God has work to do. He promised to bring Israel into the Promised Land. Moses wants to see that happen. And that is a picture of God bringing us into our promised land, the new heavens and earth. That's His work to do and we long to see it.

But you also have work to do in this. So, Moses prays that the work of God’s people will be the kind that stands and endures, and not the kind that fades away.

You have work to do. Part of that work is simply learning to see reality as it is. Frailty and futility. You need to work to see that the only way you can live well in such a reality is with Jesus. He is the only one who can take this reality and make it work. Only He gives hope. 

So, how will you respond? Will you try to ignore it all? Will you just try harder? Or will you repent of your sins and believe Jesus so that you can get a heart of wisdom and live well? Understand that you are surrounded by a culture that will not encourage you in this. So, you'll need to surround yourself with like-minded Christians - Christians who see reality - so that you will be able to encourage each other. As you do that you will become people who are being satisfied and people who are becoming increasingly happy.