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Trail Markers

Numbering our days; our time on earth limited

David Van Kley, Journal columnist

Written millennia ago, Psalm 90 puts the human lifespan in stark perspective: The days of our life are 70 years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong.” Seventy years–the proverbial “threescore and ten,” as the King James Version put it. Or perhaps, “by reason of strength, fourscore.”

I don’t need a calendar to remind me I am approaching the age to which this ancient text refers. Every day, my body tells me so.

Just yesterday, a friend of mine died after a long illness. “Our years come to an end like a sigh,” writes the psalmist.

Hank Williams Sr put it less eloquently seventy years ago: “No matter how I struggle and strive; I’ll never get out of this world alive.”

Something about the autumn season forces this awareness upon us. The leaves have fallen, save for those few still clinging, as if in desperation, to oak branches. Everything is either dead or dormant. If the snow has not yet come to stay, it will soon enough. This is the UP, after all, and winter is knocking at our door.

The annual descent into winter is accompanied this year by a pandemic tearing through our communities. COVID–19 cases are spiking around the country and the death toll is rising. Likely we know someone who has been infected. Chances are we know someone, or at least know of someone, who has died of this illness. Vaccines promise an end to the pandemic, but that end is not yet in sight.

In the midst of this seemingly depressing reality, Psalm 90 counsels, “Teach us to number our days so we may get a heart of wisdom.”

Why would facing our mortality be a wise thing to do?

The first thing that comes to mind is that it conveys a sense of urgency. Recognizing that our time on this earth is limited, we “seize the day,” making the most of the time given to us

But something else is even more important. The psalm unmasks our human limitations, our finitude–our inability to control the world around us. If we cannot, by the force of will or effort, reverse the course of aging or escape death, we also will recognize that life itself is a gift. Behind the gift, there is a Giver.

Each day is ours because the Creator once breathed life into us through our parents–and continues to sustain the breath of life in us.

What can we do except give thanks?

For Christians, there is still more. Death has been overcome in the resurrection of the Incarnate One, Christ Jesus–God with us. His victory is God’s promise to us in life and death. His presence with us is resurrection life, here and now.

To quote a beloved hymn: “Though I should wander the valley of death, I fear no evil, for you are at my side, your rod and your staff–my comfort and my hope! Shepherd me, O God, beyond my wants, beyond my fears, from death into life.”

Editor’s note: The Rev. David Van Kley is a retired pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

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