For weeks now I have been reflecting upon Psalm 90. It is a prayer of Moses. Verse 2 reads, “Before the mountains were brought forth,/or ever you had formed the earth and the world,/from everlasting to everlasting you are God.”

From everlasting to everlasting, God remains. From everlasting to everlasting, God is constant. From everlasting to everlasting, God is steafast and sure. Amidst cancer, amidst leukemia, amidst bulging discs in the spine, amidst wayward children, amidst family strife, amidst false friends, amidst isolation and betrayal and corruption, from everlasting to everlasting, God is there–unchanging, holy, and certain.

Each week at our church we send out a prayer list. It is normally full of people requesting prayers for loved ones battling cancer of some kind, or back surgery, or some such. The focus is on bodily health. And that is understandable. Sickness is bad; no one that I’m aware of longs to be sick or to suffer.

Verse 9 of Psalm 90 reminds us that we are finite: “For all our days pass away under your wrath;/we bring our years to an end like a sigh.” The people recognize their sins and God’s anger and wrath towards that sin. They feel God’s just judgments against them. We don’t want to go too far, like Job’s three friends did, and imply that sickness is a direct result of an individual’s unconfessed sin. That would be presumptuous for fellow sinners to do. After all, God was the one who ordained Satan to afflict Job, in order to show Job’s genuine faith in the covenant faithfulness of God to his people. God was there throughout all of Job’s suffering, and God rewarded Job in the end and rebuked the shallow theology of Job’s three friends.

In Psalm 90, Moses prays in verse 12, “So teach us to number our days/that we may get a heart of wisdom.” This is one of those lines of Scripture that is burned into my soul. Learning to accept the reality of our finitude is to lead us to wisdom. And wisdom is to drive us to God, the fountain and spring of all wisdom.

Christ is called “the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24) in the New Testament. In sum, this beautiful prayer of Psalm 90 is to lead us to the person and work of Jesus, the Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Moses was a man who was likewise afflicted and acquainted with grief. He knew suffering. He knew frustration with the wickedness of the world system. He knew the loneliness of leadership. He knew rebellious and fractious people. Yet he endured. He persevered. He prayed that God would instruct him in how to number his days so that he would get a heart of wisdom. Why should we do any differently, if we are seeking to honor the Lord in the ways we live?