Prayer of a Pilgrim
- Strength For Life
- 12 minutes ago
- 6 min read
Psalm 90 was written by a pilgrim. Moses, the man of God, whose prayer is recorded for us, was born a stranger in a land he knew was not his own. His parents were not Egyptians. And while he was raised by Egyptians—the daughter of the pharaoh of Egypt—he understood that he was not an Egyptian. Hebrews 11 records a pivotal decision in Moses’ life, “when he was come to years,” where “he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season” (Hebrews 11:24-25).
Moses was a stranger because his forefathers were strangers. Abraham, the father of the Hebrew people sojourned in the land of promise, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise” (Hebrews 11:9). For the last 400 years, Moses’ people were homeless. And by the time Moses was born his people had forgotten what they were waiting for, they were the children of the man who, by faith, “looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God” (Hebrews 11:10). Abraham was looking for a home. Though Moses would see the promised land with his eyes, he would never find a place to call home either.
It is significant, then, that Moses opened his prayer this way: “LORD, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.” Did you catch it? By the time Moses prayed Psalm 90, he had come to understand something important: permanence, safety, and provision are a Who, not a what.
Psalm 90 is all about transience. God is the only fixed point. “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God” (v. 2). Humans, however, are temporary. In comparison to God’s unchangeableness and eternality, our time is short. His perspective is such that a thousand years “are but as yesterday when it is past” (v. 4). To God, a millennium is like a night guard’s rotation.
We humans live short, temporary lives for another reason. God has appointed it so. Moses acknowledges to God in verse 3 that “thou turnest man to destruction.” In other words, God has cut our lives short. It is He who carries us away “as with a flood. Though we grow like grass, we are cut down like grass as well (vv. 5-6), and it is God who does the cutting.
Even more troubling is the reason our lives and times are so short. It is because, as Moses prays to God, “we are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we troubled” (v. 7). Individuals and nations alike rise and fall because of the judgment of God. Our ability to recognize that we are deserving of judgment is a test of our humility. The proud find fault with God for His severity. The poor in spirit understand with Moses that, as God set our iniquities before Him, and our secret sins in the light of His countenance (v. 8), we are worthy of that judgment.
Moses had a front-row seat to the judgment of God on rebellious and sinful people. For forty years, a leader who had disqualified himself from entering the Promised Land led in circles a generation that was also doomed to die in the wilderness. Over and over Moses was an instrument of either judgment or intercession for a hard-hearted people. Verse 9 comes from Moses’ own experience: “all our days are passed away in thy wrath: we spend our years as a tale that is told.” In the case of the children of Israel, their years were literally a tale that we still read today.
Moses’ lifespan surpassed the 70 or 80 years that verse 10 says we can reasonably expect from a long life on the earth. Nevertheless, he understood—as anyone at the end of their life knows—that regardless of the length of life, even days full of “labor and sorrow” pass quickly. “It is soon cut off, and we fly away” (v. 11). Who should not marvel at the One who has the power of life and death, and fear He who has the authority and righteous anger to cut off the sinners in His wrath?
Our response to this God is not shrinking fear, bitterness, or fatalism. After all, we are His servants, just as Israel was in Moses’ day. Instead, our responsibility is to learn wisdom from the Lord. We should let him “teach us to number our days,” so we can learn the wisdom He makes available to us in our brief journey among the living.
Psalm 90 would be depressing if that were the end of the prayer. However, Moses ends by asking the Lord to establish a divine work in this fallen world of sin, change, and death. The man of God asks for an act of mercy: for God to turn from His anger and give His people something they have not earned. Moses asks for blessing. He desires prosperity, joy, satisfaction, and gladness in the wasteland of human folly. Perhaps the most audacious prayer of all is in verse 15: “make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil.” In other words, Moses asks the Lord to redeem all the years of judgment, and for Him to distribute joy in the same measure as the wrath.
Did Israel deserve that? No. Neither did Moses, and neither do we. But Moses asked for it, and so can we.
The most amazing request of all is the very last one. Moses requests that he and his children would see the hand of God at work both around them and through them. Just as Moses requested to see God’s glory in Exodus 33, so he asks that his children be brought into that divine revelation.
Seeing God’s work for ourselves is the most glorious thing we can behold this side of eternity. If you are a parent or a grandparent, however, you know that there is one thing more glorious yet: that our children would see it too. That is what Moses requests.
Pay close attention to how God would be seen. The “beauty of the LORD our God” is upon us when He sees fit to “establish…the work of our hands” (v. 17). What is the mark of God’s presence and blessing in this fallen world? It is when people that once produced death and misery instead produce beauty and gladness. Only God can do that.
In many ways we live as pilgrims as well. This is because the full promises of God wait for fulfillment until the resurrection and renewal of all things, and the reign of Christ. Like the men and women of faith, who “died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13), so do we today.
However, Moses prayed for something else. The man of God asked for a foretaste of eternity inside of time. While we wait for final fulfillment of God’s promises, we also ask Him to restore our lives and the lives of our children now. Citizens of heaven can live with God’s unique blessing in a way that the children of wrath cannot. Remember, the Promised Land was not the millennial kingdom or new creation. However, it was the promise of God inside of time.
To be honest, I consider the prayer of Psalm 90 to be unusually audacious. The examples of work that has God’s obvious, unique blessing that produces joy and satisfaction are very, very few. I wonder, though, what God might do for the next generation if we lay hold of these promises? Maybe, like Moses, we will not see the results with our own eyes. But people of faith have always lived like that. I end with a question. What are we bold enough to ask God for, and to strive toward with His blessing?
The above article was written by Jonathan Kyser. He is a pastoral assistant at NorthStone Baptist Church in Pensacola, FL. To offer him your feedback, comment below or email us at strengthforlife461@gmail.com.
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