AT every transition of year into year the ninetieth Psalm addresses us ever again in the majesty of its touching language.
More than three thousand times that change of year has taken place, since Moses sang this psalm of the generations, this song of the centuries, this hymn of the passing years, and still his psalm speaks to us, as though it were only sung yesterday.
At the time when he wrote this psalm, Moses was evidently past the sixtieth year of his age, and approaching the seventieth, and saw at most some five or more years as future before him. “As to the days of our years, therein are seventy years, and when we are very strong they are eighty years.” Moses did not even surmise, as his song shows, that God would so lengthen his life beyond measure, that he might lead his people from Egypt through the wilderness into Canaan.
In “trouble and sorrow” his life had worn away, and now the fact impressed him, how quickly his life might be cut off, and how with every new year on which he entered it became a flying away, a passing of our days in God’s wrath, a spending of our fleeting days as a tale that is told. He felt himself “carried away as with a flood”, and as one who is continually “as a sleep”. And then … suddenly any day Death might enter in through his window. Still flourishing in the morning, and before it is evening, be cut off by God’s terrible almightiness, to wither away in the grave.
But that very perception, that his life was approaching its end, and his “work” on earth would go on no further, inspires him for this prayerful song of the ages, in which his supplications diverge in two directions.
“Establish Thou the work of our hands, yea, the work of our hands establish Thou it,” thus he prays with the eye on what lies behind him.
“Let Thy glory be seen upon my children,” that is his prayer for what is to come, when he shall be no more.
Past and future as interbraided.
In the “past” lies the accomplished work, which God alone can establish. In the “future” the rise of his children and children’s children from generation to generation, upon which God Himself alone could make to appear His glory.
How broad, how elevating of soul is this grand interpretation of the passing away and the self-renewal of the year!
No narrow-souled standing still at the year that now is gone, and the new year, that now comes, but a courageous climbing to the top of the mountains, and from that high mountaintop with one look to view all of his own life, yea, all the life of this world, that lies behind and that stretches itself before him.
So he looks back to far generations behind. “Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.” Yea, he goes back to and behind the Creation: “Before the mountains were brought forth or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting Thou art God.”
And now he sees, how through these thousands of years God has caused one generation of men to be born after the other, but also equally often and equally unchangeably has said to those born children of men: “Return, ye children of men.”
And so life hastens on and on. Generations come, and generations go, now flourishing, presently withering, and because of sin trouble, and sorrow, and death chasing after them, till they too go under and disappear, and God again populates all those cities and villages with new people, who have been born from those parents, and continue the work of those earlier generations; and under all these changeabilities God alone ever remaining the same, He in whose eyes “a thousand years are but as yesterday when it is past.”
And in this flood of centuries, in this stream of years Moses himself drifts along. He is but just come, and already his life hastens to its close. He feels that presently he too goes away.
But though he goes, he leaves two things behind, his work and his children.
And both of these he now commits to God.
That work, O God, establish it in the midst of that stream of years. And those children, in whom my blood lives on, O, God, let Thy glory appear upon them.
Better still, for even in his children he is not selfish, but embraces in the same prayer, with his own children, also the children of his friends and brethren, yea, the children of all the redeemed of the Lord: “Let thy work be seen of all thy servants, and thy glory upon their children.”
At the beginning of a new year head and heart can be so filled with other things.
With things that by themselves are by no means sinful, with which in very deed the heart must be engaged.
He who suffered from weakness and disease, longs for improvement and recuperation. The balance between income and output which must now be made out, can in prospect bring fear to the heart. One may be at a turningpoint in life, as when presently lovers are wedded, or, for some one else a fixed position in life, long desired, at last is about to be realized, in brief, within the small, narrow circle of the present there can be all sorts of things to disquiet the heart, and why should not such desires with supplication be permitted to come before God?
But yet, we desire so ardently, that at such turningpoints the Lord’s people should not thus remain standing in the low table lands, but should show that they carry something of the eternal in their heart. For this, they must climb the mountaintop with Moses, from which the backward and forward look into eternity, scans the whole river of time, and they that are known of the Lord can live in the future of their children.
So only do they live the life of the Covenant. After the rule of the “Unto you and unto your seed.” So only they carry out the Baptism-thought: “You and your children and as many as are afar off.”
Surely we pass away. Not long now, before our place is in the Fatherland above. But from one side we do not go away. In our children our life goes on, and the thread of that life, which here we dropped, we presently take up again, when at the return of Christ, our own children’s children, and the great grandchildren of our children’s children shall meet us before the Throne of the Lamb.
Our name perishes, but in our children our name, and our generation goes on, or rather not our generation, but the generation from which we sprang. By the wondrous institution of marriage the interlinking of our generation extends itself, and links itself to other generations. But it is one stream, pushed forward in one direction, of one particular sort of human life, as it has particularized itself in your generation; and that in the generation of so many that continuance of life of those who have died is not seen, is our own fault.
How many there are who never think of that continuance of life in their children and children’s children. In whose prayer that outflowing of their own blood in the future of the generations has found no place. Who have developed no character of their own, and therefore could not cause a type to live on in their generation. And who, yea, love their children, and care for them, but have no faint idea of this appearing of the glow of glory upon their children and children’s children, to distant generations.
Even when it comes to marriage, how often it happens, that for all sorts of reasons one remains unmarried, with no ardent desire to continue one’s own life in following generations; and that at the same time, for this follows from it, one cuts off an other from this opportunity.
How much higher the ground on which Moses stood, to whom that future of his children, came first in his thoughts and in the deliberations of his heart. His work truly he commits to God, but above all his children, that the glory of the Lord might appear upon them.
And where the prayer was such, how glorious has been the outcome there!
For has there been one generation, like the generation of Jacob, upon which the glow of the Lord’s grace has appeared so gloriously upon the children and children’s children?
To carry one’s children on the heart. Therewith to enter upon the new year. Under that blessed constellation to live through the year. It stands so much higher than “to be troubled about many things.” It elevates, and gives the soul that holy daring to face the future, for he who puts it upon his children, his help stands in the name of his God. It cuts off narrow-heartedness, and small-souledness. It makes our outlook broad. It makes one reach out far into future ages.
Provided—for on this it depends—that this carrying upon the heart of our children does not become a sort of idolizing of our darlings, making the all-in-all of our care of them the desire to keep them exempt from temptation and with anxious tenderness to train them, but without reckoning with the spot and place, the service and the calling in the Kingdom of Christ that shall be theirs.
They can be shown by the tens, who have been brought up, O, so carefully, and nothing has become of them of count for the Kingdom of Christ, or could become, because all that tender care had the child in view, and the welfare of that child, but not that child as “man or maidservant of the Lord.”
The child then becomes something apart. It must be healthy, it must become brave, it must go to heaven, and on earth obtain as good a position as possible. But it does not go for the sake of Jesus, to train a manservant or maidservant for Christ and for His honor. Salvation for his child, but the glory of Jesus upon his child and child’s child becomes not the inspiring thought.
Then one is not conscious that he is a member of the people of God, and his child with him, that presently under the banner of the Cross he may take part in the conflict of that people of the Lord. One goes on from year to year, presently from the last year on earth he goes into eternity, but during those years themselves he has not lived in connection with eternity, and thereby has not seen to his children with an eye upon what after our dying awaits the people of God.
Such was the case with all too many for long years.
God be praised, there are better signs now. In our churches there is more stability. Baptism has become alive again. Ties to the past and to the future are felt again. A brighter dawn is rising.
But even that beautiful dawn will certainly go under again, if God does not establish the work of our hands, and unless in every company of the Lord’s people, for every year that comes anew, the prayer of all fuses into this one prayer: “Thy glory, O God, be upon my children and children’s children, from generation to generation. Amen.
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