I’ve been thinking about history and my sense of time through the lens of this language from Psalm 90:
“The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.” (ESV translation)
I don’t believe the psalmist is marking out the outer bounds of human longevity (people can and do live longer than eighty years), but commenting on the brevity of our lives.
But taking eighty years as a general lifespan, consider this:
1780s — Founding of the USA as a nation
- One lifespan -
1860s — American Civil War
- One lifespan -
1940s — World War II
- One lifespan -
2020s — Today
USA as a country is three human lifespans long. As a people, as a national identity, it is still young.
When I think about history this way, I consider all the complexity of those three lifespans. The joy, the sorrow, the wonder, the hopelessness, the freedom, the bondage that have come about in those three lifespans. The complexity, the contradictions, and the conflict that has spanned those three lifespans. History that seems so distant and removed feels up close.
And I remember the verses from Psalm 90 both before and after:
“For we are brought to an end by your anger; by your wrath we are dismayed. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence.” (ESV translation)
“So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” (ESV translation)
