Day 2
A Prayer of Humility
hu·mil·i·ty
“modesty or respectfulness”
Psalm 90
A prayer of Moses the man of God.
3 You turn people back to dust,
saying, “Return to dust, you mortals.”
4 A thousand years in your sight
are like a day that has just gone by,
or like a watch in the night.
5 Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death—
they are like the new grass of the morning:
6 In the morning it springs up new,
but by evening it is dry and withered.
“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.”
– C.S. Lewis, Oxford professor and author, Great Britain
If we decided to call yesterday’s reading, “This is God,” then today’s reading would be entitled, “…and this is us.”
Have you ever noticed how to a child a 1-hour nap seems like an eon but to an adult that same hour is hardly enough to get anything done? In their book The Power of Moments, Chip and Dan Heath talk about why time seems to move faster as you get older. The brain processes new information and new environments with much caution, slowing down the experience by taking in much more information than normal. Once an experience or process becomes very familiar, we cease to use that part of our brain as we maneuver through it, which is why we can drive home from work and hardly remember how we got there. If you are bungee jumping, the fall seems to last forever even though it is a few short seconds. When you are young, everything is new (time moves slower). When you are old, there are few surprises (time flies). Can you imagine being a God who knows the end from the beginning and is incapable of being surprised? A thousand years would be like a day.
Since Moses considered dust, grass and other parts of creation that reflect how short our lives are from God’s perspective, go outside for a moment and pick up some dirt. What does knowing you came from the stuff of earth and will return to it someday make you think and feel? Go on a drive to the ocean, or walk where you can see the mountains or sky. What does knowing that these immense entities existed long before you came along and will exist after you are gone mean for you and the things that concern you today?
Pray
- Read verses 3 through 5 as your prayer of humility before God today. Say each word of it to Him as if it was your own. Paraphrase them as needed to make them sound more like something you would say if you were contemplating your own smallness before an infinite God.
- As we wait on God and pursue Him during this quarantine, shrink wrap three concerns of yours down to the size that God sees them. Ask for His help.
- Thank Him for being a God who does not worry over you and for knowing exactly how He will fulfill His promises to you during your current circumstances.