Let Our Children See Your Glory

Lord, through all the generations

you have been our home! . . .

Satisfy us each morning with your unfailing love,

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

Give us gladness in proportion to our former misery!

Replace the evil years with good.

Let us, your servants, see you work again;

let our children see your glory. Psalm 90:1, 14-16

MOSES WAS A MAN without a country, having left Egypt and knowing he would not cross over into Canaan. God’s people were also without a country when this psalm was written. So we might expect Moses to describe the land of Canaan, the Promised Land, as Israel’s dwelling place. But Moses began his psalm, “Lord, through all the generations you have been our home!” (emphasis added). Moses understood that our truest home is not a place but a Person. In God alone we find the security, safety, and peace that our hearts long for as we wander our own wildernesses in this world. Moses recognized that this is how it has been for all generations —that every generation before his and every generation after his lives in a world marked by mortality and sin, and we are all in great need of finding our true home in God.

So Moses gives us —one of the many “generations” —a song that provides us with words to petition God for what we need most as we seek to make our home in him. We need perspective about the brevity of life so we don’t view our time on earth as all there is. We need the satisfaction that comes from knowing we are recipients of God’s unfailing love. We need hope that our lives will not be forever defined by the evil and suffering of this life but instead will be made radiant with the glory of God. We long to experience his redeeming, resurrecting power in our lives and in the lives of our children. And so we sing to the Lord who, through all generations, has been our home.

Lord, teach us to realize the brevity of life so that we may grow in wisdom. Satisfy us each morning with your unfailing love so we may sing for joy to the end of our lives. Give us gladness in proportion to our former misery! Replace the evil years with good. Let us, your servants, see you work again; let our children see your glory.