It was all a dream

“They are like a dream.” Psalm 90:5

Moses was a man of deep feeling. When he prayed, he meant it. This psalm is one of his prayers, and it is one of our treasures. Apparently, he was the first national prophet and the first psalmist; Jesus is the Last.

This poetic prayer is a sober look at our sinful morality in light of God’s holy eternality. We are evil and easily killed; God sees all and lives forever. The saying before us—they are like a dream—springs out of these thoughts.

Our likeness to dreams comes as a shock. Is that what our lives really are? Before techie-thoughtie leaders talked about the simulation, the man of God talked about the strangely dreamlike nature of our lives. At first it sounds like a good thing. But what Moses means is not so pleasant: we vanish like a dream, and are gone forever.

The longing feeling you get when you wake up from a good dream is a microdose of the pain we feel when people die. They’re gone and we can’t find them anymore. But that is not the end. Eternity welcomes all, some to life, some to death that never dies.

Listen! For the sake of your own souls, and for the sake of your loved ones, make sure you are safe in Christ today. Flee to him and you will (in the words of another psalm) “be like those who dream” (Psalm 126:1).