Sunday Morning Meds--Our Dwelling Place

C.C. and Neeltje Schaap

I'm going to stick with Psalm 90 for a while on Sunday mornings, sometimes new meds, sometimes old. This one is old--I don't remember what the nature of the journey was that takes such a strong role in this meditation. I'm happy to say that, and that I can lends credence to the comfort of this great psalm.

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“Lord, you have been our dwelling place 

throughout all generations.” 90:1

Today we start on a journey. We won’t be gone long—only two days—but it’s perilous, and the stakes are high. We’re trying to affect a change, again, in a battle we’ve been fighting for years. We’re hoping that this journey will change things, nudge aside the woeful indecision that so often accompanies depression.

My wife and I are both afraid it won’t change anything, that this new venture, like others, will be a sordid failure; but we’re confident that what we’re doing—or trying to do—is what we should be doing because it’s a step that has to be taken.

Right now—amid all the fear—both of us are blessed by this assurance: we know—scared as we are—that right now, right this moment, we’re doing the right thing.

This morning, that’s the perilous nature of my morning thanks—that as risky and futile as it might be, our little journey together is, doggone it, the best thing, if not the only thing we can do. We don’t have a choice, really. We’re hoping and praying, as always, for a real blessing.

When you walk through this first memorable verse of this famous psalm, it’s no wonder why Psalm 90 has brought the peace it has to so many for so many years. The affirmation of this first line sweeps along with such force that I feel as if I can ride on the eagle-winged glory of its affirmation, even today on our own perilous journey.

This is the truth, Lord, says Moses, the writer to whom the Word itself gives credit—this is plain and undeniable fact: you, God, have been our only comfort, you’ve been the place in which we’ve lived, throughout all generations.

When I stumble through this verse (it’s humbling, I think), I think of generations of believers in my own family. I may well lack the bouncy joy of a brand new convert, but I’m ever thankful to be the descendent of generations, literally, of faithful believers. As far back as I can trace my own family tree, the Christian faith has been a part of my heritage.

But, big deal. Today we start on a journey. We won’t be gone long—only two days—but this journey is perilous, and the stakes are high.

I know. I’ve said that before. But this morning—a Sunday morning, in fact—I am, as I’ve already said, deadly afraid of failure that is very, very real.

About an arm’s reach away from where I sit is a portrait of my great-grandfather, a preacher. Back behind me is another picture—a wonderful South Dakota homestead portrait of my great-grandparents on another side, believers too, a family who came to the Great Plains of South Dakota fleeing religious persecution in their native Holland.

I can’t take those people along on this journey we’re taking this morning. Their pictures will do me—and us—no real good because those good folks are dead and gone. And I don’t think they’re asking the Lord this morning for a blessing for us, great-grandchildren none of them ever knew nor could imagine. I may be wrong.

But it’s great joy to read these words. “Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations.” It’s a joy because I know a great cloud of witnesses, in peril, has trusted, have believed, have invested their confidence and their joy, just as I am, in the same Lord God, the same deliverer, the same eternal Father.

You’ve been there for generations, Lord—that’s the truth we’ll pack along.