A wise prayer.
"Lord, make me to know mine end," etc. The writer of this most beautiful, though most sorrowful, psalm opens to us his inmost heart. The inspiring Spirit speaks through one of like passions with ourselves. His-own sorrows had taught him sympathy. Looking at human life, he seems to see one vast funeral procession, in which business and pleasure seem alike vain. Yet he shrinks from uttering his pent-up feelings, lest he appear to the ungodly to be blaming God. So he turns to God and pours out his grief in prayer.
I. THIS SEEMS AN UNNECESSARY PRAYER—AT LEAST AT FIRST SIGHT. If any truth is obvious, it is this—of the brevity and frailty of life. Brief at longest (Psalms 90:10), especially if we reckon the time spent in sleep or dissipated in numberless trifles (Psalms 39:5); frail, ever carrying within it the germs of decay and dissolution. Utterly uncertain—the strongest life may in a moment snap like a thread or be torn like a tree from its root. Who knows not all this?
II. YET IT IS A VERY NEEDFUL AND WISE PRAYER. For there is no truth so obvious and certain which men take so little to heart. "All men think all men mortal but themselves." The picture Charles Dickens has drawn of the lawyer who is for ever harping on the duty of making your will in health, and who dies intestate, is very true to human nature. The psalmist's prayer is not for everybody else, but for himself—"Teach me … my days." How account for this blind insensibility of men to the certainty of the future—this "walking in a vain show"? It seems unaccountable, yet so ingrained, nothing less than Divine teaching will cure it.
III. THE TEACHING HERE PRAYED FOR IS NOT TO INFORM US OF THE FACT, WHICH EVERYBODY KNOWS—AND FORGETS, BUT TO ENABLE US TO LEARN ITS LESSONS. Not mere knowledge, but wisdom.
1. Do not anchor your hope on a life so frail, or store your treasure in a world you may leave to-morrow—must leave soon (Psalms 39:6; Matthew 6:19-21).
2. Do not leave to-day's work to be done to-morrow. A certain eminent statesman is said to have made it a rule to "do nothing to-day which you can put off till to-morrow." This has two great disadvantages:
3. Cast the care of the unknown future on God. The frailest thread of life cannot break in his hand unless he wills (Matthew 10:22-31; Matthew 6:1-34 :80).
4. Live as pilgrims, "like unto men who wait for their Lord" (Psalms 39:12). If you are a believer in Jesus, a child of God by faith, then the keys of life and death are in the hands once nailed for you to the cross, of which he says, "Neither shall any pluck them out of my hand" (John 10:28). Death will but come as his messenger. Learn to look full in the dark angel's face and smile, and you will see an answering smile (Hebrews 13:14; 2 Corinthians 5:1, 2 Corinthians 5:8).