Psalm 39: The Handbreadth
This is a psalm for anyone who has ever stood at a window late at night and realized, with a start, how little of their life remains. "Lord, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is: that I may know how frail I am." It is an unusual prayer — not for more days, but for the grace to see how few there already are. David begins by trying to hold his tongue before the wicked, biting his lip until the fire inside him grows too hot to contain. And what finally breaks from him is not complaint but this: every man at his best state is altogether vanity. Our days are a handbreadth, our years a shadow, our whole little hustle of heaping up riches carried on for the benefit of we know not whom. The psalm does not comfort by denying the brevity of life but by reorienting it: "I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were." We are passing through. And if we are passing through, then the only question worth asking is the one David asks at the turn: "What wait I for? My hope is in thee."
00:00 A Bridle for the Tongue
00:20 The Fire That Burned
00:40 Make Me to Know Mine End
01:00 A Handbreadth of Days
01:20 A Stranger and a Sojourner
01:45 My Hope Is in Thee
02:10 Spare Me, That I May Recover Strength