Looking back
Author: Joan Harman
September 23, 2021
PSALM 90 Looking back
There is a devotional
practice I've mentioned previously where you spend times during the year
reading and thinking about the age you will be on your next birthday and study
the Psalm corresponding to that number. That practice puts me at 90. My
plan now is to do 3 contemplations of Ps. 90 between now and then.
This week I will
expand on my experience with this psalm in my past.
vs. 1 Lord our
dwelling place.....In Ezekiel 11:16 God tells Ezekiel to comfort the people in
exile that God will always be with them, wherever they are. I think I always believed that I would always
have God, because I am God's child. Since always is a long time, that assurance involves a lot of iterations
in my life. As I aged, I became less
sure of the small details of that even as I still accepted the over-arching
idea of Emmanuel, God with Us.
vs. 2 This is the
creation story I believe. God, the
creator, WAS before God's product, the creation.
vs. 4 God’s time is
not our time. One basis of time in my lifetime was second, and another basis
was the 24-hour day, a solar basis. I had one farmer friend who refused to
observe Daylight Savings Time, and I came to find out some governing bodies
have ruled again DST. Given that, I also
found it easy to believe God's time is not based on the same clock and
calendar.
vs. 5-6 I remember
trying to do a series of watercolors about hay and grain stalks, fresh hay in
the morning dew and brown and dry after a day of being chopped and stacked by
our Amish neighbors.
vs. 10 When I turned
70, I began to take this psalm seriously, but it was only after passing 80 that
I began to read the words and writings by Joan Erickson and Kathleen Dowling
Singh.
In my early church
experience we sang from the Psalter weekly, but today the only song I remember
is from 90: 10....I’ll Fly Away. And
that's from another Christian background, not my childhood church. This song is one of the favorites of a niece
who was twice widowed by age 50, and she chose that song to be used in worship
at each partner's funeral.
vs. 14 I'm one of the ones who doesn't doubt God's
power. My doubts and changing opinions
over the years have been more about how God uses God's powers. By the time I began to comprehend the full
darkness of sin and willful harmful behavior, I was associated with
denominations that had a theological construct of God's mercy.
And here we are as UMC
Christians who follow John Wesley's thinking of prevenient grace. Thanks be to God
Blessings,
Joan K. Harman <><<><
joanharmank@gmail.com
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