I think about my death a lot.
I imagine what it might be like to be on my death bed, so weak I need a machine to breathe for me. I wonder who might gather around that bed and what they might say. I wonder if I’ll be there because of a heart attack or a stroke or a car accident. I wonder if I’ll fade gradually and have to be put in a care facility. I wonder if I’ll slowly lose my memories and my ability to control my bowels.
They’re grim thoughts. But they’re an occupational hazard, since I work as both a hospital and a hospice chaplain. For the past three years, I’ve had a front row seat to emergency rooms and ICUs on one hand and extended care and assisted living and memory care facilities on the other hand. I’ve seen a couple hundred dead bodies and I’ve seen them go quickly in minutes and I’ve seen them go slowly over months.
We all know death is inevitable. And yet it seems to surprise us every time it happens. At least, when it happens to those we love.
Psalm 90, the one psalm attributed to Moses the man of God, is vexed by death. And what makes him even more perplexed is the contrast between us and God. Starting with God, he notes our Lord’s eternal nature.
Lord, you have been our dwelling place
throughout all generations.
Before the mountains were born
or you brought forth the whole world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God (Psalm 90:1-2).
All generations have known God as home. Before mountains pushed up from tectonic plates that have been grinding against each other of millennia, he was God. Before he birthed the earth itself, he was God. Mountains are the oldest things we know in creation, but even they had a start date. The world did too. Not God.
Look all the way back and God was there. Look all the way forward and he’ll be there. The span of time itself is a parenthesis within the story of God.
But not us. We’re on a much smaller order. Where mountains and earth are a drop in in the bucket compared to God. We’re a drop in the bucket compared to them. We come and go at the wave of a hand. And the one who is waving his hand is God.
You turn people back to dust,
saying, “Return to dust, you mortals” (Ps. 90:3).
This is hard for us to hear. God is the one who returns us to dust. By his word we were made and by his word we are unmade.
I love thinking of God bending down and breathing life into his handcrafted clay man. But I really, really don’t like thinking of God snatching that breath from my lungs.
We were made mortal. And God made us this way.
A thousand years in your sight
are like a day that has just gone by,
or like a watch in the night (Ps. 90:4).
Much is made of this in 2 Peter 3:8 —
But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.
How we count time means little to God. Even our biggest number is just a tick of the second hand as far as God is concerned. Even old Methuselah didn’t match up. Like a watch in the night, we pass by without much to notice.
We’re like the grass that so exuberantly grows in my lawn only to be mowed down, mulched into fine compost, and blown away on the wind.
Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death —
they are like the new grass of the morning:
In the morning it springs up new,
but by evening it is dry and withered (Ps. 90:5-6).
This makes me think of the lovely cherry blossom trees throughout Vancouver that I loved seeing blossom when I lived in Canada. Almost overnight, previously barren limbs would be covered with the happiest pale pink. But far too soon, often within just a couple weeks, a spring rain would batter them down and the branches would be empty again. And the gray skies would weigh me down, their heaviness making wonder why I got so excited by those pink petals.
Moses agrees. The man of God sees our quick rise and fall and wonders what God is up to.
We are consumed by your anger
and terrified by your indignation (Ps. 90:7).
God must be mad at us. Why else would be give us such a short leash? Why else would he give us so little time.
In the classic sci-fi movie Blade Runner, replicants have an abbreviated life span of only four years. When the replicant Roy Batty confronts their maker Eldon Tyrell to demand more life, Tyrell says it’s impossible. Roy’s response is to kiss and then kill his creator. There’s a mixture of love for giving life and anger for making it so short. The whole tension in the movie centers on this angst of rejoicing in life and despairing in death.
The biblical story tells us that death was never God’s intention. Sharing in the life of the Trinity was God’s intention and remains so (eternal life is the theme of John’s Gospel). But the introduction of sin into the way we engage with the world and everyone else requires the limit of death. As C.S. Lewis notes in The Pilgrim’s Regress, death is like a tourniquet, a harsh but necessary means to stop the gangrene of evil. Similarly, in Blade Runner, the four-year lifespan of replicants was instituted to keep them from overrunning humanity, a firewall of death to protect life.
Even so, it’s easy for us to experience the reality of death more as an angry punishment than as a necessary stopgap in the process of healing what is wrong in us so that we can truly participate in the eternal life of God.
You have set our iniquities before you,
our secret sins in the light of your presence (Ps. 90:8).
With death as a tourniquet for evil, our sins stare us in our face. They call for our deaths. And God exposes them all in the light of his presence. It’s not a harsh light, but it can feel that way because of the harsh realities it reveals.
All our days pass away under your wrath;
we finish our years with a moan (Ps. 90:9).
I wish I were only getting better as I age, but I’m not. I’m falling apart. And that’s literal. Cells and bones and muscles and memories are not what they once were. I’m slower and weaker than what I once was.
Over the last several years of chaplain work with hospital and hospice patients, I’ve seen a lot of death. When Moses says we finish our years with a moan, I can only nod in agreement. We do.
The last breath slips between our lips and we give up the ghost with a moan.
And all our days till then? They have their beauty. But they are hard and tragic and lonely and toilsome. They often feel like they pass away under God’s wrath.
Our days may come to seventy years,
or eighty, if our strength endures;
yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow,
for they quickly pass, and we fly away (Ps. 90:10).
My Dad is 93 and lives with my family. He’s exceeded Psalm 90’s projections of 70 or 80 years. But as I watch him fade, I’m not so sure I want to match his longevity. As his minds slips and also his ability to handle the most basic details of self-care, I see him wondering if he’s outlasted his time on earth.
And as I weed through all of the paperwork he’s accumulated throughout his lifetime, I see evidence of a lot of labor and interpersonal strife and a ridiculous number of bills being paid. And I think of the weary chore of it all.
If only we knew the power of your anger!
Your wrath is as great as the fear that is your due (Ps. 90:11).
Moses has spiraled down into a dark place in the face of mortality, both his and ours. And he can’t get it out of his mind that our deaths are the result of God’s anger with us.
Here’s where a psalmist’s prayed theology and a biblical theology collide. Just because a psalmist prays something doesn’t make it the theology of the Scriptures. We know that the two don’t agree often. Just two psalms prior to this one, the gnarly Psalm 88 accuses God of numerous things of which God is not guilty. The psalmist’s prayed theology in Psalm 88 doesn’t match the theology of the rest of the Scriptures. And I believe the same is true here. Human mortality is not a living expression of God’s wrath.
At the same time, it’s important that we take the Psalms as guides for prayer. They lead us down the trackless wilds of our emotions. They teach us to express our conflicting feelings that contradict what the Scriptures express. Because only when we get out our anger do we realize that it’s we who are angry, not God.
And the truth is that it is more respectful to God to tell him our frustrations with him than to hold that anger inside of us, unexpressed. When we hold it inside, we hold it over him. When we express it, we invite a conversation with him. And that, the psalmists show us, is the better way.
Teach us to number our days,
that we may gain a heart of wisdom (Ps. 90:12).
After nine angry verses, Moses turns inward. What can we gain from our mortality? What can we gain from knowing we are cemetery-bound?
If our days are limited, then we ought to make the most of them. If we have a finite number of days in our account to spend, then let’s spend them wisely.
Count every day. Don’t let any escape. You don’t have many. Don’t waste even one.
Numbering our days leads to a wise heart. It reprioritizes our lives.
If I’ll read 50 more books in my life, I shouldn’t waste time on ones I don’t enjoy and don’t enrich my life. And don’t get me started on the amount of our lives we waste on TV shows and the internet and social media.
Shouldn’t I love more? Laugh more? Sing more? Spend time with those I love more?
Shouldn’t I stress less? Shouldn’t I be angry less? Shouldn’t I avoid all of the things that make my life less, that make the lives of others less?
There are so many questions we need to ask ourselves if we start counting our days. But Moses doesn’t stop there.
Relent, LORD! How long will it be?
Have compassion on your servants.
Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love,
that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.
Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us,
for as many years as we have seen trouble.
May your deeds be shown to your servants,
your splendor to their children (Ps. 90:13-16).
For the first time, we hear the name Yahweh (rendered as “the LORD”) in Psalm 90. Whenever we come across God’s name, we are reminded that he is a covenantal God. He ties himself to us. He binds himself in relationship with us. He’s not some divine watchmaker who set the universe in motion but is too far above us to commit himself to us. He is the one who has compassion on his servants.
He’s the one who offers joy to us every morning by meeting us with his relentless, never-ending love. And as we stop from our rush into empty endeavors and bask in the God who has bound himself with blood to us, we are satisfied, we settle into each day and are glad.
Yes, we still face adversity and struggle through all kinds of painful and frustrating circumstances. Yes, we have years of trouble behind us and ahead of us. Even so, we smile and are happy in the middle of them, because God is active in our lives. We see him at work all around us for we have attuned ourselves to him, are attentive to him. And knowing that he is at work in us and through us and around us gives meaning and purpose to our lives, even the hard parts — especially the hard parts.
May the favor of the Lord our God rest on us;
establish the work of our hands for us —
yes, establish the work of our hands (Ps. 90:17).
When we know that God works in us, then we know that the work we do has meaning, for God is right there in it.
We may pass through this life like water through fingers, but that doesn’t make it bad. When God’s favor rests on us, we are favored indeed. When he gives our work meaning and purpose, then it has meaning and purpose.
When our work joins God in his work, then we know our work won’t be for nothing. Time has the tendency to erase empires, turning the hard work of business people and politicians into empty ventures. But God’s work endures and when we work with him, favored by him, our work is eternal.
So, count your days. Spend them well. Look to God each morning for meaning. Join him in the work he’s doing in the world. In this way, defeat death.