Psalm 90
14 Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love,
that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.
We live in a state of dissatisfaction. We look to the next thing, the next purchase, the next drink, the next high, the next brilliant insight, the next salvation to make us whole. Especially now as we look to the new year and take stock of our lives, we come up with all the things we’d like to change. This psalm begins with reflections on the constancy of God alongside our own mortality. We are like grass, the psalmist observes, that springs up green and new and then withers in the sun (dry, parched grass sounds very familiar to this desert dweller). The psalmist seems discontent with this reality, crying out that the best of our seventy or eighty years are but trouble and sorrow and pleading with Yahweh to relent and have compassion on his servants. But he makes a shift in verse 14, with the seeming discontent giving way to the love of God and the satisfaction that comes with it. It is the unfailing nature of God’s love that fills us up. It is the unfailing nature of God’s love that invites us to sing for joy. In our state of dissatisfaction, it is the unfailing nature of God’s love that makes us glad all our days.
17 May the favor of the Lord our God rest on us;
establish the work of our hands for us—
yes, establish the work of our hands.
Then we come to close of this psalm which takes a wonderful shift. Instead of complacency or resignation, the truth of God’s everlasting nature leads us into doing something. After this whole conversation about our return to dust, our sins, our pleading that the deeds of God be shown to us again, the psalmist returns to the work of our hands. The things we do, the temporary, broken things we do, endure by the favor of God. Let’s take on this prayer as we walk into the new year. As we look at the things we’d like to change, as we write our prayers for the year, as we try to make new habits, let’s remember that it is through God that our work is established and endures. We are both satisfied by his love and moved to newness and work by his love. It quenches our thirst and gives us strength to walk on in his ways. In talking to the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus says in John 4:13-14, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” So be satisfied this new year with the unfailing love of God. Sing for joy and be glad all your days. In Christ his favor rests upon you, so plan and pray, make new habits, learn new things, care for the people around you, and know that it is only God who establishes the work of your hands.
