Not Amused

Psalm 90:10-17

10Seventy years are given to us!

Some may even reach eighty.

But even the best of these years are filled with pain and trouble;

soon they disappear, and we are gone.

11Who can comprehend the power of your anger?

Your wrath is as awesome as the fear you deserve.

12Teach us to make the most of our time,

so that we may grow in wisdom.

13O LORD, come back to us!

How long will you delay?

Take pity on your servants!

14Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love,

so we may sing for joy to the end of our lives.

15Give us gladness in proportion to our former misery!

Replace the evil years with good.

16Let us see your miracles again;

let our children see your glory at work.

17And may the Lord our God show us his approval

and make our efforts successful.

Yes, make our efforts successful!

In the sixteenth century Queen Elizabeth I invited an Anglican bishop named Rudd to come and preach at the palace. Rudd was well regarded by the other clergy, and many expected him to be the next archbishop of Canterbury, head of the Anglican Church. When the current archbishop extended the invitation for Rudd to come, he advised him, “The queen is now grown weary of the vanities of wit and eloquence,” adding that she now preferred sermons that “come home to her heart.”

On this basis Bishop Rudd selected Psalm 90:12: “Teach us to make the most of our time,” as his text and used the surrounding verses to discuss the difficulties of the aging process and the inevitability of physical death. He assumed that the queen, now in her old age, would relate to these words.

Maybe she related too much. As it turned out, the queen was highly offended by his direct remarks about her aging and death. She made sure that Bishop Rudd was not the next archbishop of Canterbury. Yet, though his career suffered greatly, Rudd gained a reputation as a preacher who said what God gave him to say, whether the queen liked it or not.

Moses, the author of this psalm, would have smiled at Rudd’s actions. He never minced words himself, even before the pharaoh of Egypt. Ultimately, it’s the Lord’s approval that makes us successful (verse 17) and no one else’s.

O God, our help in ages past,

Our hope for years to come,

Our shelter from the stormy blast,

And our eternal home!

ISAAC WATTS

Bible Networking

Compare the hope that the psalmist prays for in verses 14-15 with an even more glorious hope in 2 Corinthians 4:17-18.

Notable Quotable

T. S. Eliot ends his poem “The Hollow Men” with:

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.