Number Your Days And …

Number Your Days And …

Rev. Jeff Wood, First Presbyterian Church of Sebastian

WeLoveFirst.org & Facebook.com/welovefirstsebastian

• Teach us to number our days aright,

  that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

  May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us;

  establish the work of our hands for us–

  yes, establish the work of our hands.  Psalm 90:12, 17

   

  Karl Barth, a theologian, used to preach in a prison near where he taught in Basel, Switzerland.  When he preached to the inmates on this psalm quoted above, he called their attention to a painting of a Christian saint contemplating a human skull.  He said that this psalm bids us to ponder our mortality.  Yet that is not where the psalm starts.  It’s beginning starts at the pre-beginning.  Its first word, literally, is God and he precedes all beginnings and is himself without beginning (or end).

  God, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.  That’s the first sentence of the Psalm.  People dwell in time and space and so they, and time and space itself, exist within God.

  So ponder, yes, your years and gain wisdom from that.  But also ponder the God who is beyond your, and everyone’s, years … and space.  Gain wisdom also from that.

   

  Rev. Jeff Wood, First Presbyterian Sebastian, 1405 Lousiana Ave, 32958 (772-589-5656)

  WeLoveFirst.org     Facebook.com/WeLoveFirstSebastian    Sundays 10 am