A String of Selah Pearls - Psalm 39:4-5

Positioned gracefully across the Book of Psalms is a string of seventy-one pearls, lovely beads of wisdom followed by the admonition SELAH which means, “Pause, think on these things, meditate.”




Psalm 39:4-5 “Show me, O LORD, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man’s life is but a breath. Selah.”



Meditation:


Here, David, the psalmist king, acknowledges the brevity of life. He recognizes that Creator God purposely set man’s life span . . . and it’s fleeting, a breath, a vapor. David actually asks two questions, one direct and one implied . . . “How long have I got?” and “Why have you made man’s life so short?”

Have you, or someone you love, faced death? Isn’t the question always, “How long have I got?” We don’t like unfinished business. We want to tie up loose ends. We also want to prioritize our activities depending on how much time we have left.

And yet God has ordained that, under normal circumstances, “The length of our days is seventy years—or eighty, if we have the strength.” Ask people who are seventy, and they will tell you that those seventy years passed in a flash. A vapor. A breath. We don’t have much time, period.

SELAH

Look up: Psalm 90:10