“All our days pass away under your wrath; we finish our years with a moan. The length of our days is seventy years — or eighty, if we have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.” (Psalm 90:9-10)
Today we face one last, unpleasant dose of hard reality before we turn the corner tomorrow into Moses’ hopeful pleading with our good God. Bottom line: If this life is all there is, that’s not good enough.
But that’s not the story we tell each other very often. Instead, the world is mostly full of hopeful stories urging you to believe a different message: “Look at all of life’s beauty! Look at the brotherhood of man! Look at all the progress we’ve made!” But any story that offers hope without Jesus – meaning without the intervention of a grace-giving God – is telling a lie.
It’s not that every moment of life here sucks. God made the place, after all. There is beauty! There is goodness. Some moments do bring gladness, pleasure, joy, and friendship, even for those far from God. But that’s still not good enough. As Solomon put it in Ecclesiastes, God has put “eternity in our hearts.” We know deep inside that we were meant for so much more than this.
We need God. He built us to need him.
Think: Do you think it would make sense to be a hopeful, positive person without a relationship with God through faith in Jesus? Why or why not?
Pray: Thank God for building you to need him – and then making a way for you to be with him.
Do: Read Romans 8:22-25 to hear Paul describe this groaning we all feel now, even those of us who are in Christ.