My mom and I were talking as we often do while I’m driving to visit my grandkids. Our conversation, as it so often does, turned to eternity. We worry and pray over the health and wellbeing of family and friends but an even more serious concern is spiritual health. I am 55 and a cancer survivor. Mom is 76 and her mom, my grandmother, will be 94 this year in October. It’s true that none of us knows when we will take our final breath on earth, but the older I get, the more I am aware of my own mortality. We don’t dwell on it in a morose sort of way. Far from it. I know the Author of my story. My name is written in the journals of heaven. I belong to His Kingdom. (Luke 10:20) My future is secure in Christ alone and I find peace and purpose in His Word.
When my grandmother turned 90, my daughter made her favorite cake and my parents brought her to our house for lunch. After she had finished off her soup and sandwich and a hefty slice of Carolines’s cake with lots of frosting, I made her coffee and sat and held her hand while she sipped. Looking into her eyes, I asked her how it felt to be 90. She said it’s not so different from any other year but she never imagined she’d live to see it. Then she quoted a familiar scripture passage from Psalm 90 to make her case.
“We live to be about 70.
Or we may live to be 80, if we stay healthy.
But even our best days are filled with trouble and sorrow.
The years quickly pass, and we are gone.”
Psalm 90:10 NIRV
https://bible.com/bible/110/psa.90.10.NIRV
Psalm 90-106 are attributed to Moses. The NIRV subheading reads, “A prayer of Moses, the man of God.” Deuteronomy 34:7 informs us that “Moses was 120 years old when he died. But his eyesight was still good. He was still very strong.”
(Deuteronomy 34:7 NIRV
https://bible.com/bible/110/deu.34.7.NIRV) Glancing back in the Psalm to the first verse, we read,
“Lord, from the very beginning you have been like a home to us.
Before you created the whole world and the mountains were made, from the beginning to the end you are God.
To you a thousand years are like a day that has just gone by.
They are like a few hours of the night.
Teach us to realize how short our lives are.
Then our hearts will become wise.”
Psalm 90:1-2, 4, 12 NIRV
https://bible.com/bible/110/psa.90.1-4.NIRV
From the very beginning, Lord, You have been like a home to us. Remember that Moses was displaced at birth. When Pharoah, King of Egypt, commanded that all male children be thrown into the Nile, the Hebrew midwives feared God more than they feared Pharoah. When Moses’s mother saw that he was a remarkable child, she hid him as long as she could but eventually she followed the letter of the law without adopting the spirit. She wove a basket and sealed it with pitch and floated it along the bank of the Nile at a place where Pharoah’s daughters came to bathe. Miriam, Moses’s sister watched from the shore and when Pharoah’s daughter took compassion on the babe and claimed him for her own, Miriam offered to find a Hebrew woman, his own mother, to nurse the baby.
When he was weaned, Moses was taken to Pharoah where he grew and was educated as an Egyptian. When he was old enough to identify with his Hebrew kin, he killed an Egyptian in anger. When his actions became known to Pharoah, he ran to Midian where he aided local shepherdesses and ended up married into their family. He first encountered God in a burning bush and reluctantly accepted the divine call to return to Egypt. God displayed His power among the Egyptians and freed Israel from slavery. Moses led them through their wilderness wandering for forty years but was denied access to the promised land because He failed to honor God as Holy at the rock at the desert of Zin. This same Moses is described among the heroes of faith in Hebrews.
“By faith, Moses, when grown, refused the privileges of the Egyptian royal house.
He chose a hard life with God’s people rather than an opportunistic soft life of sin with the oppressors.
He valued suffering in the Messiah’s camp far greater than Egyptian wealth because he was looking ahead, anticipating the payoff.
By an act of faith, he turned his heel on Egypt, indifferent to the king’s blind rage.
He had his eye on the One no eye can see, and kept right on going.
By an act of faith, he kept the Passover Feast and sprinkled Passover blood on each house so that the destroyer of the firstborn wouldn’t touch them.”
Hebrews 11:24-28 MSG
https://bible.com/bible/97/heb.11.24-28.MSG
This same Moses claimed God as his dwelling place, his home from the very beginning. He valued suffering in the Messiah’s camp far greater than Egyptian wealth because he was looking ahead, anticipating the payoff. That payoff was not the promised land. Moses anticipated by faith an eternal home where God is visible and ever present. At times, Moses was allowed to speak with God as a man speaks with a friend. At the end of his life, this was the one thing he longed for above every other.
“Not one of these people, even though their lives of faith were exemplary, got their hands on what was promised.
God had a better plan for us: that their faith and our faith would come together to make one completed whole, their lives of faith not complete apart from ours.
Do you see what this means—all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on?
It means we’d better get on with it.
Strip down, start running—and never quit!
No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins.
Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in.
Study how he did it.
Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever.
And now he’s there, in the place of honor, right alongside God.
When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through.
That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!”
Hebrews 11:39-40 MSG
https://bible.com/bible/97/heb.11.39-40.MSG
Hebrews 12:1-3 MSG
https://bible.com/bible/97/heb.12.1-3.MSG
“Lord, You have been our dwelling place [our refuge, our sanctuary, our stability] in all generations.”
Psalms 90:1 AMP
https://bible.com/bible/1588/psa.90.1.AMP
My husband and now adult children, my mom and my dad are my biggest fans. They have seen me at my best and at my absolute worst and they have loved me and encouraged me faithfully, but only Jesus knew and loved me before I was born. Only Jesus died for my salvation. He alone is my eternal home.
“Don’t let your hearts be troubled.
Trust in God, and trust also in me.
There is more than enough room in my Father’s home.
If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?
When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am.
And you know the way to where I am going.”
Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.”
John 14:1-4, 6 NLT
https://bible.com/bible/116/jhn.14.1-6.NLT
Precious Lord Jesus,
May I enter Your presence with Your praise on my lips!
Let my family see that my love for You is real and true!
Let them know You are waiting for me, Jesus, with opened arms as You wait for them too!
You are all I’ve ever wanted, Jesus, to be known and loved completely and forever.
Everything else was counterfeit until You.
The love of my parents points me to You.
The love and care of my good husband points me to You!
I pray that our marriage points our children and their children and a watching world always and only to You, Jesus, as husband and lover of our souls.
You loved me first!
My love is founded in Yours!
Let Your love flow freely through me to others I meet until You take me for Yourself, Lord!
“I will praise the Lord as long as I live.
I will sing praises to my God with my dying breath.”
Psalms 146:2 NLT
https://bible.com/bible/116/psa.146.2.NLT
Amen.
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