15. In God we have Everything

A Meditation of psalm 90

Psalm 90, entitled “A prayer of Moses, the Man of God,” is a poem on God’s eternity and man’s transience. Along with that we see how God-man-world relationship was understood by the civilization that gave birth to this poem.  

God is the source, the originator, of the world. In verse 2, God is compared to a mother, and the world to a child. Although there is such a relationship between God and the world, there is an important difference between them. God is beyond time limit—without beginning or end. But the world has beginning; and it has end too. The world has its beginning in God; it has its end also in God.

We, the human beings (Adam), are formed out of the dust of the ground (Adamah). Just as we come from the dust, we return to the dust. We have our beginning and our end in dust. Being dust, we are a part of the world.

Being a part of the world, we are limited by time. We are just like the grass that flourishes in the morning, and fades in the evening. Only we live a longer span of time –seventy or eighty years. But in the sight of God, for whom a thousand years is like a day, it is an insignificant time.

We have no worth in ourselves. We are just like grass. This is a frightening truth indeed. However, that is only half of the truth. The other half is stated in the very first verse of the psalm: God is our dwelling place. Although we are like grass in ourselves, we are precious with God as our dwelling place. In God we have everything; without God we have nothing. Knowing this is wisdom (vs.12).

Apart from God, death is a frightening snake that comes out of its hideout to take our lives away. Living with God, the same death becomes nothing but a toy snake.

Back to Contents