Stuck in a Moment - September 26
Today’s Readings: AM Psalm 87, 90; PM Psalm 136; Hosea 1:1-2:1; Acts 20:1-16; Luke 4:38-44
Today’s Reflection
“So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.” –Psalm 90:12
Over the years, I recall my mother telling me on at least several occasions, “Don’t wish your life away.” I take this piece of wisdom to be meant to remind me to live in the present, to appreciate what I have and what I am now, rather than always looking to the next big moment, whatever that may be.
For us human beings, it can be hard to live in the present. One of the attributes of God that I find myself most fascinated with and most in need of embracing more fully in my own life is that divine sense of time. God has always been, always is, and always will be. God’s transcending of time is reflected in the divine name, I AM. Those two short words that make of God’s name, I AM, are very comforting. No matter what is going on in my life or your life or in the world beyond ourselves, it’s very grounding to remember: God is.
And as much as we might be tempted to debate the finer points about who God is and what God’s role has been in history and is in the present and future, when it comes down to it, what can re-center us in that holy relationship between the divine and the human is the realization that God was, is, and will always be.
Psalm 90 is woven together with the threads of the language of time. We read of how God has existed before all creation, “Before the mountains were brought forth, or the land and the earth were born, from age to age you are God” (v. 2). What follows are a several very mystical sounding verses that remind us humans that God’s understanding of time exists on a plane which we cannot fully understand, a divine scope that makes our human lives seem like just a moment: “For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past and like a watch in the night. You sweep us away like a dream; we fade away suddenly like the grass. In the morning it is green and flourishes; in the evening it is dried up and withered” (vv. 4-7).
As the psalmist continues to ruminate about how our human sense of time intersects with the divine sense of time, he comes to this moment of clarity: “The span of our life is seventy years, perhaps in strength even eighty; yet the sum of them is but labor and sorrow, for they pass away quickly and we are gone” (v. 10). In other words, we have these 70 or 80 years—maybe more, maybe less—to live out the purposes that God has given each one of us from before we were born. On one level, you can look at these years as “but labor and sorrow.” If you look back on your life—or if you look forward on it, for that matter—with an eye toward all the hours spent in work or hardship, then that is the meaning you will attach to your life. As the Irish band U2 philosophizes in their 2001 song, “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of”:
You’ve got to get yourself together
You’ve got stuck in a moment and now you can’t get out of it
Don’t say that later will be better now
You’re stuck in a moment and you can’t get out of it
And if the night runs over
And if the day won’t last
And if your way should falter
Along the stony pass
It’s just a moment
This time will pass
U2 wrote this song as they struggled with grief at the passing of their fellow musician Michael Hutchence (of the band INXS), who had died by suicide. Bono reflects that he wrote the song to articulate what he wished he had said to his friend, Michael, when he was stuck in a moment that he didn’t think he could get out of. Sometimes our limited human understanding of time, combined with particularly harsh circumstances, can make a person lose their sense of time and the will to keep living. U2 is reminding us in this song, as the psalmist does in Psalm 90, that “it’s just a moment—this time will pass.”
But if we get back to the divine understanding of time, and God’s point of view on our human lifespans, then it is possible to have a more hopeful perspective on the meaning of all our minutes, hours, days, and years. As the psalmist prays, “teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom” (v. 12).
From that point on in Psalm 90, the psalmist’s perspective changes toward one more focused on living in and being satisfied with each new day that God has given us: “Satisfy us by your loving-kindness in the morning; so shall we rejoice and be glad all the days of our life” (v. 15). Each day God’s mercies are new. As we start each new day, no matter what troubles we may have encountered in days past, in each new day we can find hopefulness in this: that God loves us, God made us, and our hope in God transcends all else that was, is, or will be.
—Becky+
Questions for Self-Reflection
When you get stuck in a moment, what helps you to get unstuck and regain perspective that this, too, shall pass?
Daily Challenge
Attempt to make it one hour, or one morning, or even a whole day without checking to see what time it is. This may mean you have to put away any devices on which you would be tempted to check the time. How does living an hour, a morning, or a day without references to man-made measures of time change your experience of living in the now?