HCLM BLOG

While we hiked the Canyon a couple weeks ago a friend encouraged us to begin memorizing psalm 90.
I was skeptical.
It sounded like a sunday school assignment for a kid in the 4th grade.
but I try to submit to folks I trust when I get the opportunity.
So I took him up on it. We didn’t get all the way through it that week, but since we’ve been back I’ve been adding to it.

It’s a nice little set of truths to have in my back pocket. Besides the fact that my people have been praying that prayer for thousands of years, I’m finding it is relevant for me throughout my days too. It puts the success and failures of my life in perspective. It sets God in the right place: always older, stronger, bigger than me. But also points out his attention to me in each aspect. Yesterday as I drove around I took a few minutes to say it back to myself; it loosened my shoulders and focused my heart and mind.

I’m going to memorize more, but here’s what I have so far:

O Lord you have been our dwelling place in all generations.
Before the mountains were born or you gave birth to the earth or world,
Even from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

You turn men back to dust saying, Return to dust o sons of man
For a thousand years in your sight is like a day when it passes by or a watch in the night.
You sweep men away in the sleep of death, they are like grass of the new morning
Though in the morning they spring up new, by evening they are dry and withered.

We are consumed by your anger, terrified by your wrath.
You set our sins before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence.
All our days pass away under your wrath, we bring our years to an end like a sigh.
The years of our life are seventy, or even if by reason of strength eighty
Yet their span is but toil and trouble, they are soon gone
and we fly away.

You’ll just have to take my word that was from memory.