My days are like a shadow, but the Lord endures for ever!

Psalm 102:9-12

‘I have eaten ashes like bread and mingled my drink with weeping, because of Your indignation…. For You have lifted me up, and cast me down…. My days are like a shadow that declines, and I am withered like grass! But You, O Lord, shall endure for ever!… You shall arise, and have mercy on Zion! For the time to favour her…has come!’ Psalm 102:9-13.

Calvin comments: “Lying prostate on the ground, they licked as it were the Earth — ‘and so, did eat ashes’… The same sentiment is expressed in the last part of the verse, ‘I have mingled my drink with weeping’…. He declares that his mourning, was without intermission….

“The last clause…(is): ‘You have lifted me up, and cast me down!’…. The sentence may denote a violent method of casting down…. When we consider that the image of God which distinguished Adam was the brightness of the celestial glory, and when on the contrary we now see the ignominy and degradation to which God has subjected us in token of His wrath — this contrast cannot surely fail of making us feel more deeply the wretchedness of our condition….

“‘My days are like the shadow which declines’ when the sun…begins to slope down toward the west…. What he (the holy writer) attributes to the afflicted Church, seems indeed to be equally applicable to all men…. As soon as we advance towards old age, we speedily fall into decay….

“By the term ‘days’ is to be understood the whole course of…life…. The captivity was to the godly, as the setting of the sun — because they quickly failed….

“In the end of the verse, the similitude of ‘withered grass’…is repeated, to intimate that their life…was involved in many sorrows which dried up in them the very sap of life…. To live in that condition, would have been worse than a hundred deaths — had they not been sustained by the hope of future deliverance!…

“‘But You, O Jehovah, shall dwell (or endure) for ever!’… When the Prophet…sets before himself the eternity of God…, what benefit will accrue to us from the fact that…our frail and perishing condition does not permit us to continue unmoved for a single moment?… Our life is a mere illusion!

“But the inspired writer, calling to remembrance…(that) God has declared that He would make the Church the object of His special care…, has no hesitation in representing all the godly…as partakers of this celestial glory in which God dwells…. We are like withered grass; we are decaying every moment; we are not far from death; yes, we are rather as it were already dwelling in the grave. But since You, O God, have made a covenant with us…that You will always dwell in the midst of us…, we must be of good courage!…

“Whenever we are besieged with death…, we should reason thus…. God continues unchangeably the same…. Nothing can hinder Him from aiding us!” Do you so believe?