Teach us to number our days in such a way
that we bring a heart of wisdom.
13Turn, O Lord! How long!
Change your mind toward your servants.
14Satisfy us in the morning with your mercy,
so that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days. (Ps. 90:12-14 EHV)
Another new year! What will it bring? For some, the thought of a new year is exciting. Flip the page on the calendar – look at all those blank squares? What will we fill them with? Where will we go, and what will we do? This can be an encouraging breath of fresh air in a cold, dark, and dismal season of the year. The idea of a fresh start is appealing, because who doesn’t have things they wish were different about their life?
Some of us, however, are of a more realistic nature – perhaps we might say cynical? The new malarkey we will encounter in the new year has a remarkable resemblance in sound, smell, and feel to the current malarkey with which we are dealing. This might be (just maybe!) because we are the same. We have the same habits, the same flaws. The same unhealed wounds and the same subpar ways of coping with them. The same unhappinesses, with the same people, too often for the same reasons. I think one of the things that draws people to the thought of a new year is its implicit promise of a new beginning. Maybe this year will be different, we are tempted to think – even though if we thought about it, we’d realize it probably wouldn’t be all that different.
So it is incredibly comforting for us to turn to our eternal God, who does not change, and to find all we need, in this year and every year to come – until time ends. He is faithful in every situation of life. His mercies are new every morning. Christ’s love for you is constant and unwavering. He will not look with favor on you one day, and push you away the next, as humans do. He is continually true to all His promises. They are all YES in Christ.
And yet Moses, the divine penman of Psalm 90, asks the Lord here to change His mind! Why? Certainly God does not change His mind, does He? Here we encounter a paradox: that God is eternal and unchanging, yet He also takes into account our actions and our thoughts. We can experience different elements of God’s way of dealing with the world, according to our choices and desires. If we sin, we experience His anger. Our guilty consciences remind us of this and give us no rest. His law thunders from heaven and breaks the flimsy walls we erect in vain against Him. If we repent and turn to Him, as Moses gives voice to here, we experience His mercy. We find all over again His warm, loving acceptance in Christ. We are assured that we are His and He is ours, that not even sin or death or hell can separate us from Him forever. His Word declares it to be so, and His resurrection from the dead proves it beyond a doubt.
Moses in Psalm 90 seeks what every believer seeks every day: to know God more deeply, not just with head knowledge or a dry recitation of abstract facts, but to experience God’s love and power personally. We do this by attending to His Word and crying out to Him in prayer. New year, new you? Why not! But as you make your plans and your choices in the new year, don’t forget to turn to the Lord, whose unchanging love and faithfulness are your joy and companion at all times. Amen.