Magyar Egyház, 1957 (36. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1957-01-01 / 1. szám
MAGYAR EGYHÁZ 9 ENGLISH ANOTHER YEAR IS DAWNING SECTION Text: Psalm 90 The thought of the 90th Psalm has been produced for us by the hymn writer, Isaac Watts, in his greatest hymn: O God, our help in ages past, Our hope for years to come, Our shelter from the stormy blast, And our eternal home. The well-known tune, St. Anne, with which these words have been associated for nearly two hundred years, brings out the serious character of this psalm very well. For many years one of London's best known churches, St. Clement's, which is located on the city's busiest street, the Strand, played this tune with its bells every day, reminding the busy, rushing people of the great city, Time, like an ever rolling stream, Bears all its sons away; They fly forgotten, as a dream Dies at the opening day. This Psalm, therefore, both in its hymnic form and in its original form as found in Holy Scripture, speaks to us appropriately at the end of one year and the beginning of another. It reminds us of the brevity of our human life and the eternity of God. God of the sin which besets us and the wrath of God against sin, of our need of repentance and our final refuge in the mercy of God. I. The Psalmist brings his description of the brevity of our human life to its climax with the prayer, “Teach us to number our day, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom!” In commenting upon these words, the reformer Calvin says: “Is it then so hard to number our few years, seeing that even a strong man hardly ever reaches the age of eighty? Children learn the numbers almost as soon as they begin to talk, and we do not need very much instruction to learn to count to one hundred on our fingers. Therefore our carelessness is even more despicable. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves for we never seem to grasp how short our lifespan. It is indeed strange that human beings are able to measure all kinds of things that are outside themselves. They can even determine how far the moon is from the center of the earth. In short, they know all the measurements of heaven and earth, while they cannot number their own seventy years for themselves!” And these few years of our lives seem even shorter when, as the psalmist does, we think of them in relation to God's eternity. We sometimes hear a song, “The everlasting hills, how firm they stand!” But the psalmist reminds us, “Before the mountains were brought forth, or even thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, THOU ART GOD .... A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.” Just think of all the human beings who have lived in a thousand years. The whole history of the United States of America takes up only one hundred and eighty years. Luther and Calvin and the other reformers were alive only four hundred years ago. A thousand years would take us back to a time when our ancestor lived as heathen barbarians in the woods of a European continent on which few of the present day countries had even been founded! Yet all this span of history, and all the countless lives that lived and played their part in it: with God it is like yesterday when it is past, like a watch in the night — the ancient Hebrews had three “watches” during the night, and so this last expression means about four hours, that is all. No, the psalmist is not even satisfied with this: even the space of a thousand years is like a clump of earth carried away by a rushing river, or like a dream! But yet these few years — seventy, or eighty, or more, or perhaps many less — how important they are to each one of us! They are ours to use or to misuse. With them, we can be a burden to humanity, we can ignore God, and die, and go down to the dust unmourned, and unsung. But with them, too, we can bring help and happiness to others, we can serve God, and in our death we can look forward to an eternal dwelling place with Him. No wonder then, that the psalmist prayers: “Teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” And, do we need to be reminded, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom!”? II. Now this part of the psalmist's message is a somewhat depressing one: the brevity of life as compared with the eternity of God. The psalmist himself feels that it is unsatisfactory, and he offers us a reason for this state of affairs. Sin, he says, has brought it about that life is so short, and for many, so wasted and worthless. “For we are consumed by thine anger, And by thy wrath are we troubled,” he declares. The shortness and comparatively small worth of human life is not in itself such a surprising theme to modern man. In many ways, modern ideas have served to emphasize this fact. Many people now reckon the age of the earth in tremendously large figures. It is often asserted that man has existed on this planet for a period many times longer than we used to think. And when we look up at the sky, we no longer see a curtain hung with lights, but an indefinite
