August 23 Daily Devotional

Monthly Theme:

These meditations are on the psalms. All those songs about Zion, the temple, and the Son of David really make sense when they are sung In the New Testament church.

Bible Reading:

Psalm 90

Bible Text:

May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us [and] establish the work of our hands (Ps. 90:17).

Devotional:

This "Prayer of Moses the man of God" is filled with terror. The setting is the desert, that merciless place where the anger of the LORD banished Moses and the Israelites for forty years—until the generation that left Egypt was buried in the sands.

God alone has immortality. To God all of world history is like "a day that has just gone by." Human life seems insignificant. Yet Moses and his fellow Israelites, still alive among the graves of those gone before, make bold to pray. This is their double request: Let your beauty be upon our lives, and let our works have abiding value.

If the first request is granted, the second is as well. If God's "favor" or "beauty" rests on a human life, that life has imperishable value. And that person's work remains forever, because it has become part of God's work.

Our world-and-life-view differs from the one reflected in Psalm 90. God planted the cross of Christ in our world. The lightning of God's wrath and the thunder of his anger were caught there, in the body of our Savior. "Justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. 5: 1).

But some of the terror of Psalm 90 still blankets humanity, for the last enemy still stalks the earth. Therefore we desire two things of the Lord: let your grace rest on us; and "establish the work of our hands for us—yes, establish the work of our hands."

Andrew Kuyvenhoven's Daylight, a modern devotional classic, was originally published in 1994. This edition is copyright by Faith Alive Christian Resources, from whom may be ordered Daylight, the predecessor of Twilight.

A man of many accomplishments, Andrew Kuyvenhoven is probably best known for his contributions to Today (formerly The Family Altar), a widely-used monthly devotional booklet associated with the Back to God Hour. Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations for this edition of Twilight are from the New International Version

Be sure to read the "Preface" and the "Acknowledgments" by the author.