Faithful to the End

Faithful to the End

Moses wrote Psalm 90 — the oldest psalm in the Psalter, written during the wilderness years when an entire generation was dying before entering the Promised Land. 'Teach us to number our days' is the prayer of a generation that has watched years pass without fulfillment, that has seen the cost of faithlessness, that wants the remaining days to count. On December 31, with the year ending and a new one about to begin, it is the most natural prayer of the thoughtful person: let me count what I have been given and use what remains well. Let the passage of time produce wisdom, not waste.

Psalm 90:12 is the central petition of a psalm that begins with the eternity of God ('from everlasting to everlasting you are God') and the brevity of human life ('the years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty'). The contrast produces the prayer: given the brevity of life measured against the eternity of God, let us count our days well — not in an obsessive, death-haunted way, but in the wisdom-producing way that comes from understanding the stakes. The 'heart of wisdom' sought is the heart that knows what matters because it knows how little time there is. On this last day of the year, count your days. Let them produce the wisdom that knows what the next year must hold.