TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11
Psalm 71:1-24
James 4:13-17

Make each day
count for Jesus.

SEVENTY YEARS YOUNG

This Psalm was composed by David. The Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) annotates this.

The many pleas to God for salvation and safe-keeping from his enemies breathe the spirit of David. What is striking in this Psalm that tells of his struggles is that he mentions his life from the womb to the grave.

In his old age, when his joints begin to creak and his muscles are lax, when his teeth are gone and his eyes are dim, the great king of Israel must go the way of all flesh. What a picture of weariness and dreariness and self-pity. Visit any old folks home (euphemistically called “senior citizens,” and you qualify at 65) and you will dread your own winter coming. Now, David began life not at thirty when he became king. Rather, from fifteen, a boy ruddy of countenance when he became his father’s sheep boy. There in the arena of bears and lions, he had the first taste of adulthood. His life of active service by calculation would be at least fifty-five years. Who among us can claim such long and illustrious service?

Though retirement age in Singapore is sixty-two and in the USA it is sixty-six which might be raised to sixty-seven, rarely can we find one with an unbroken record. And life is not to be measured in years but in achievement. Our Lord died at thirty-three, but in the short span He did what others might take a hundred. As for David, the Lord took him from the sheep cote to be king of all Israel. Another who has served the Lord fully and beyond his age is Caleb: “And now, behold, the LORD hath kept me alive, as he said, these forty and five years, even since the LORD spake this word unto Moses, while the children of Israel wandered in the wilderness: and now, lo, I am this day fourscore and five years old. And yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me: as my strength was then, even so is my strength now, for war, both to go out, and to come in” (Josh 14:10-11).

THOUGHT: (Read Psalm 71:18.)
PRAYER: (Use Psalm 71:20.)