"As for the days of our lives, they contain seventy years, or if due to strength eighty years, yet their pride is but labor and sorrow; for soon it is gone and we fly away."

    So observed Moses, the revered leader of the nascent nation of Israel who led its people out of captivity in Egypt, where they had been enslaved for four hundred years.  These words come from Psalm 90, which tradition holds to be the only psalm Moses wrote.

    Recently, I helped a very good friend, someone I've known for over fifty years, celebrate turning seventy.  Today, at least in the West, in contrast to Moses' words, most of us view seventy as far from the end of living; indeed, if a person dies at the age of eighty, many of us wonder what happened.  My friend believes he has many more years to enjoy his existence.  And, all things being equal, he probably does.

    But Moses' words belie the quick conclusion that they reflect the thinking of his time and not our own.  His larger point is that, regardless of how many years we live, relatively speaking, the total span of our life is not long.  As one of the characters in the movie "Cloud Atlas" remarked, "Your life is but a drop in an endless sea."

    True enough.  That's why just a few verses further on in the psalm, Moses asks God to "teach us to number our days, that we may present to You [God] a heart of wisdom."

    Nonetheless, life is an amazing gift.  Use it wisely.

    Coram Deo.