Going Deeper for a Lifetime
Meditation on Psalm 92
When we moved to State College in 2007, Dottie and I started attending UBBC church in State College. On the way out of church soon after our arrival, I told our pastor Bonnie not to count on me for teaching, preaching or anything else. She quickly answered, “You’re not in your coffin yet, are you?” The comment caught me off guard and made me rethink the nature of my life after my seventieth birthday.
Pastor Bonnie’s words also brought me back to Psalm 92, “In old age you will still produce fruit and will remain green and full of sap.” Similar words are used to describe Moses as he breathed his last (Deut. 34:7). According to this text as well as others, the life of devotion grows ever deeper as we age. We are still growing, even after our seventieth birthdays. Joan Erikson, the psychologist understood that one of the last stages of life brings the experience of transcendence and spiritual growth, correcting the view of her famous husband that life cycle was completed earlier.
Psalm 92 is the only one in the Hebrew Bible specified for a particular day of the week as indicated by its heading, “A Psalm. A Song for the Sabbath Day.” Lest one think that one’s religious life centers on one day, this Psalm announces that the worshipper shares a declaration of God’s steadfast love in the morning and God’s faithfulness at night (v.2) each day of the week. Meditation and study are a daily occurrence.
This Psalm compares two types of individuals: grass that withers and dies under tough circumstances and trees that flourish like the cedars of Lebanon even in the harshest times. Study brings rootedness as in the words of the Psalm “planted in the household of God and flourishing. This passage compares those who live on the surface like grass and those nourished by the well springs of deep study of God’s word. Such has been the purpose of SVMC providing education to keep us rooted in the Word and Growing at all stages of our lives and ministry.
