Wisdom and Time

Wisdom teaches us to live within our limits, receiving each season as a gift from the God who holds eternity.

We are a little obsessed with Marvel around my house. The kids have decided to watch through the whole cinematic universe (and shows) in the waning days of summer, ahead of the release of Doomsday later this year.

So many of the movies have been playing in the foreground and background while I have been studying.

Timely enough, on the screen came Dr. Strange. There was one scene in particular that gave me pause.

It is the dying moments of the Ancient One and her conversation with the self-obsessed doctor. Their astral bodies go to a rooftop as she is dying, as Dr. Strange tells her to return to her body to live.

This is the moment she can not see beyond.

“I never saw your future. Only its possibilities. You have such capacity for goodness, but not because you crave success, but because of your fear of failure.”

DS: “It’s what made me a great doctor.”

“Arrogance and fear still keep you from learning the simplest and most significant lesson of all.”

DS: “Which is?”

“It’s not about you.”

She goes on to talk about a patient who came and used magic to fix his broken body. He had “a choice to return to his old life or serve something greater than himself. And the world would be all the lesser for it.”

DS: “I’m not ready.”

“No one ever is. We don’t get to choose our time. Death is what gives life meaning, to know your days are numbered. Your time is short. You’d think after all this time I’d be ready. But look at me, stretching one moment out into a thousand, just so that I can watch the scene…”

And then she is gone.

There is such truth in this cinematic comic. And I felt like the Spirit queued it up at that precise moment to teach me, remind me.

“Arrogance and fear keep you from learning the simplest and most significant lesson of all… It’s not about you.”

This would have been a good gut punch on its own, but I was meditating on Scripture and what it has to say about time – with a healthy dose of who all this is about and what that means for how we live our moments, our years, be they seventy or, by reason of strength, eighty.

How we embrace our place, honest about the trouble, hopeful in the outcome, kept through everything in between.

But where in the Marvel universe death itself gives life meaning, in Scripture, God gives life meaning. And he gives us the hope and promise we need to make it through. The grace and empowerment we need to thrive.

So we turn to a prayer of God’s people to pursue the wisdom petitioned for.

Wisdom teaches us to live within our limits, receiving each season as a gift from the God who holds eternity.

Psalm 90 is a lament from a people not yet where they hoped to be. Enslaved, or maybe exiled, acquainted with promise but not yet realizing its fulfillment.

Scholars argue about authorship, or the timing of it, but we will give it to Moses, recognizing that 40 years of wandering would motivate such a prayer as this.

Psalm 90 emphasizes the timelessness and sovereignty of God while teaching us about the brevity of human life. It calls attention to our need for wisdom to live within the limits of our mortality, viewing each moment and season of life as a gift from God.

So let’s walk through it and see what we can glean.

Psalm 90:1–2 “Lord, you have been our dwelling place

in all generations.

[2] Before the mountains were brought forth,

or ever you had formed the earth and the world,

from everlasting to everlasting you are God. (ESV)

Anchoring Timelessness

We begin with the contrast: Everlasting God vs. Finite Creatures

Time: I am using time as the title for our lived experience. Not merely the “continuous progression of existence going from the past, through the present, and into the future.” But the choices we make to fill the hours, days, and years of our lives.

We arrive on the scene, humanity frail, temporary, and limited but have a place of hope. An eternal God.

He has been his people’s dwelling place for all generations. Where they live in good times and bad.

This is the anchor, or foundation, of the prayer. We have a place to take hope, to bring our lament.

To the One who was before the universe was formed, from everlasting to everlasting, he is God.

This helps us because we know we are tethered to his timeline. Living through our years, even looking at earthly suffering against the backdrop of God’s eternal plan of redemption, provides hope.

As Creator of it all, we can see the value of living as he directs his people to live. To labor and rest, to honor him. He is the place we go when we realize and surrender our limits, he is where we go with out need.

If there were no timeless God, if we are all there is, so much would be pointless, and we know so many who live like it. It is sad; it hurts to see hopelessness.

But we are anchored through the waves and winds of life by a God who goes before us, who will be glorified, who cares for those who trust him.

Still, the clock ticks.

Toil and Trouble

The confrontation: toil, sin and the weight of time.

This is the lament portion of the Psalm. This is the declaration of our reality.

We go from the security of an everlasting God to the gravel of our lived experience and what sin, human selfishness, and disobedience have wrought.

Though we were made for communion with the everlasting God, for dwelling in peace with him, our first parents chose to follow the temptation to have the authority only God has. And we consistently choose to be the god of our own existence, to run after lesser things, despising his holiness.

Yet we are creatures, not the Creator.

He returns us to dust; the days are swept away like a dream. Temporary, brief… a mist.

It makes life hard.

Psalm 90:7–10 “For we are brought to an end by your anger;

by your wrath we are dismayed.

[8] You have set our iniquities before you,

our secret sins in the light of your presence.

[9] For all our days pass away under your wrath;

we bring our years to an end like a sigh.

[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. (ESV)

Toil and trouble. A direct result of God’s righteous anger toward human sin. This corrupts everything and informs everything, and what is crushing is the weight of our fallenness and divine accountability.

Leaves us limited, we tire, we emote, we ponder, and it all seems so brief.

For Israel, this is oppression, labor, real difficulty. (slavery, wandering in the wilderness, exile)

We still feel it. There is only so much time, and we try to fill it with all kinds of things we hope will solve the angst. The world urges us to “master time or conquer limites.” (striving and exhaustion).

This is living against our limits, attempts to control, to be more than we are.

Most of it just leaves us anxious, worried about what tomorrow holds, what new trouble, greater toil will come. Like caged hamsters running on a wheel, time elapsing but not getting anywhere.

It the sense that leads the teacher of Ecclesiastes to call our lived experience “vanity.”

Ecclesiastes 1:8-9

[8] All things are full of weariness;

a man cannot utter it;

the eye is not satisfied with seeing,

nor the ear filled with hearing.

[9] What has been is what will be,

and what has been done is what will be done,

and there is nothing new under the sun. (ESV)

Our psalm is contrasting God’s eternal nature with our temporal existence. Inviting us to reflect on our fleeting life. Here the wisdom lies in acknowledging our limitations. Recognizing we need more than self to make it through. And maybe time is a gift that helps us see.

This week I was talking with a middle-aged entrepreneur about learning humility. We shared much in common: youthful confidence, paired with some level of success and desire to go it alone, to prove ourselves.

But as the years pile on, and the successes are mixed with failures, we realize our weakness, our need for others, and the God beyond time to get us through.

That is what this psalm understands. Sinful, broken, insufficient, we experience life with its toil and trouble. However brief this life can be, it will be a mix of delights and difficulties.

The people praying this lament get at their inability. The opposition, their own sin, the trouble, that they haven’t been able to power through, to rise above, on their own. Confessing it, bringing their need to the everlasting One. This is the act of repentance.

“The psalmist speaks considerably more about the frailty of man than about the eternity of God. We may say readily enough that we believe God is eternal, but we need to be reminded repeatedly that our life in this world is not.” Michael Wilcock

Souls are eternal. But in our experience of this life, we are limited. Everything is on the clock.

So we accept that we only have so long, we only have so much energy, so much ability, and we make the most of it while we can. Seasons begin, seasons end.

Wisdom confronts us with limits we spend our lives denying — time passes, seasons change, we cannot stop either, and death is coming. This is not despair — it is wisdom's gift of perspective.

It’s a set up! Here is the cheat code (grace code) to unlock life as it’s meant to be. Ownership of our limits, our humanity, and surrender to the One who helps, who sustains. Life becomes the grand adventure seeking after God.

This doesn’t eliminate the rise and fall of seasons in our lives, but it gives us eyes to see eternity and a buoyancy to stay afloat.

We take all of the moments of life, straining to see the hand of the everlasting.

Because God not only created life, he ordered it that we would search for him.

Acts 17:24–27 “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, [25] nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. [26] And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, [27] that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, (ESV)

This drives the Psalmist to pray.

Tomorrow’s Promise Today

The cure: Wise living and established work in Christ

Psalm 90:12–14 “So teach us to number our days

that we may get a heart of wisdom.

[13] Return, O LORD! How long?

Have pity on your servants!

[14] Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,

that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. (ESV)

Moses prays that God would teach us to number our days. Scripture tells us that there is a time for everything, and wisdom is knowing what time it is.

“The first request is to teach his people to “number our days”: if the “years of our life” are so few, then the wise should be ever mindful of this and seek not to have their days pass away under God’s wrath (v. 9). “Wisdom” here, as typically in Proverbs, is skill in the art of godly living, and its place is indeed in the “heart,” the center of one’s thinking, desiring, and choosing (Prov. 2:10; 4:23); it is coupled with the proper “fear” of God (Pss. 90:11; 111:10; Prov. 1:7; 9:10; 14:2). Wisdom in Proverbs also orients toward the well-being of the whole community of God’s covenant people, the focus of this psalm.” C. John Collins

By recognizing that life is fleeting, we can recalibrate our priorities, focus on what truly matters, and practice gratitude for each day.

Numbering our days to get a heart of wisdom, to live within our limits, to receive each season as a gift from God, because it all is working to a purpose, to fulfillment of his promise.

“Teach us. The numbering of days is a lesson not in elementary arithmetic but in life-changing theology. Teach us not how many days we have lived so far, still less how many may be left to us, but why it is that our years are so comparatively few, and why they are so beset with trouble. In the words of Augustine, the beginning of knowledge is to know yourself a sinner. That is why. That is the heart of wisdom.” Michael Wilcock

From that comes a petition for redemption, to be satisfied with God’s steadfast love. The need for rescue.

We have an advantage over Israel here. They are looking forward – to the gift of a land, to favor, flourishing. More than that though, they are looking to ultimate redemption.

To mercy for our brokenness, and compassion for deliverance. The turning of wrath away by granting the repentant steadfast love. A love that produces a gladness that more than makes up for the years spent in agony living outside of God’s grace.

The Psalmist is praying for Jesus.

God substitutes his righteousness for sin, for toil and trouble. He made it possible at great cost to himself at the high point of history through the gift of his only Son.

Here is how Paul tells it: (law acting as guardian)

Galatians 4:3–7 “In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. [4] But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, [5] to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. [6] And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” [7] So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.” (ESV)

An heir – in redemption we gain purpose; provision for all the days and seasons of life. In Christ, you are no longer a slave to toil and trouble, to time, but alive to glimpses of life as its supposed to be.

The person formed by wisdom lives with urgency and with rest simultaneously.

Old urgencies of making more of ourselves, of filling time with striving and proving ourselves, die and are overcome by the urgency to see peace reign in our lives, in our neighbors. Rest comes knowing the ultimate redemption has been given, and we can take a nap as our Savior did! We follow the everlasting God’s call to Sabbath, in a subversive trust that he is in control.

“In the ‘death’ of sleep, when our strivings literally cease, we find the greatest gains of life and strength. It this not another way in which sleep speaks gospel truth?” Brett McCracken

With a heart of wisdom, we lean into new priorities, into freedom from the rat race, as we bring our finitude into the work of the Lord. As “establishes the work of our hands…”

This informs very ordinary lives, of tending to what God has given us, working the jobs he has afforded us, serving the people he has put us around. Yet when our lives are ordered under God’s rule there is relief from the wieght of what could have been.

“When we are tucked up under the wing of God, our limits can actually lead to our flourishing and the flourishing of our places. We participate in the mission; we do not command it. We simply testify to the goodness of God: we go, we tell, and when people repent, we invite them into the covenant community through baptism. We invite people into a spacious life.” Ashley Hales, Spacious Life

We embrace our brevity, emboldened by the promise’s call, Jesus’ commissioning of us to disciple, to tell of all he taught and has done.

Ephesians 5:15–17 “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, [16] making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. [17] Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. (ESV)

This is not “do more, try harder,” but don’t waste what you’ve been given; instead, submit it rightly under the reign of the everlasting God.

Maybe that means constraints on our time.

“Freedom isn’t stuffing more on your calendar to feel good enough. We’ll find freedom—not in the absence of constraints but in the presence of loving ones. A week to recover from a busy week. A slow night reading by the fire. Saying no to the PTA meeting, sports schedule, or last-minute request to volunteer.” Ashley Hales

Living wisely includes embracing God’s discipline and mercy, trusting Jesus to guide us through the brevity and complexity of life. Counting our days to develop appreciation for each season we experience.

“For the people to be established in their work is for them to lay hold, in true faith, of God’s promises and steadfast love.” C. John Collins

In light of this, life is not a problem to solve but an adventure to be experienced.

In Jesus we can find joy amid the hardships of life. Through Jesus, we see the ultimate fulfillment of this prayer, where God’s work is established in and through us.

Apart from Christ, toil is all there is. Judgment remains, and upon the end of your brief life you will stand before the eternal, holy God.

In Christ, there is satisfaction in the steadfast love of God; there is joy for all our days.

2 Corinthians 4:16–17 “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. [17] For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, (ESV)

Wisdom teaches us to live within our limits, receiving each season as a gift from the God who holds eternity.

Be Anchored – In Christ, you are a child of the God from everlasting to everlasting. A recipient of his steadfast love.

Number Your Days – Let Christ’s priorities shape yours. Refuse to be ruled by time and the toil or troubles that come. (saying no to overcommitment, Sabbath rest, prioritizing relationships and gospel ministry over career anxiety.) Live as unto the Lord.

The simplest and most significant lesson of all, it’s not about you… but the God who it is about has invited you into relationship with him and that makes all the difference.

Psalm 90:16–17 “Let your work be shown to your servants,

and your glorious power to their children.

[17] 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! (ESV)

Amen.