Steadfast Love

We are, most of us, well acquainted with Ecclesiastes’ carousel of seasons whirling in life – times to mourn, dance, weep, laugh. While we wish to hide tears and seek laughter instead, there is no hide-and-seek to play. The seasons – they just come.

My heart turns often with the grief of others, and mine, to this prayer:

“Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,
that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.”
Psalm 90:14

 

Psalm 90 is not a cheerful psalm, certainly not glib, but nestled in among the declarations of humanity’s frailty and sinfulness is this prayer of hope from the man who wrote Genesis.

Moses recorded the awful consequences of sin and chronicled the first atrocities. He was born during a baby genocide and saw the horrors of slavery and death.

Moses knew man’s frailty, yet he had the faith to ask the impossible – to ask for joy through numbered days overrun by sin. To ask for gladness in a world where children die and humanity chews on itself.

He asked because he knew more than sin’s ugliness. Moses knew, he recorded the very words of promise, that the snake would not bite forever, that the Promised One would crush its head. Moses knew the Creator; he witnessed the steadfast love and mercy of the Deliverer. To him Moses cries out, “Satisfy us.”

Our days are numbered. We are but dust. Life fades, wilts, withers.

Lord, in the fading, satisfy us, not with circumstantial happiness or superficial lives but with joy and gladness burrowed deep in steadfast love. We hope in you.

You will crush the biter. You will redeem. Bind up. Heal. Restore. Resurrect.

Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love. That we may rejoice. That we may be glad all our days. Because of you.