What’s the best day you ever had? Can you think of a few best days? Some of my best days were the day I got my first full-time teaching job, the day I got married, the days my kids were born. I remember some best Sundays as a child when the neighbor brought over donuts and we would “chow down,” reading the newspaper funny-pages. There were days at the beach and times of travel. Those were some best days…
Of course, the flip side of that is some worst days. I had some car accidents, and I got fired from a job. A relationship broke, a customer yelled at me. I made some stupid, immature, hurtful comments, and felt awful, and apologized – good that I apologized but the experience was terrible. Loss of loved ones and funerals make for some worst days. What’s the worst day you ever had?
Moses had a few things to say about our best and worst days and life and death in Psalm 90. In vv. 1-11 he acknowledged God as being a dwelling place and His creating power, “from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” God is in charge and He returns man to dust, “sweeping man away as with a flood, like a dream, like grass that fades and withers.” This is because of sin, which Moses talks about in relation to God’s holiness, wrath, and anger: “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. Who considers the power of your anger, and your wrath according to the fear of you?” The sobering truth is that even though we have fond memories of “best days,” they are racked with falling short, rebellion, and sin, and no one escapes eventual death. We must answer to a sin-hating God.
But there is hope! Moses prays six requests to the Lord, to make for best days. May we have wisdom to number our days rightly, and He would have compassion and mercy on us for our sinful ways. “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.” Let your work and glorious power be shown to your servants and their children. Let the favor and blessing of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands. These prayer points preserve us throughout best and worst days; they are solid walls of our dwelling place and future home with God, through Christ.
Life is uncertain at best. There is no permanence, we are frail and brief. Only through God can we look “forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Hebrews. 11:10). Our best days are ahead, with Him. Do you look forward to these best days, or are you putting your hope and all your earthly efforts into perishable things that will soon pass away? Paul said, “We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians. 4:18). Our best days are yet to come.
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