Doubletake
Years ago I attended an art exhibit that carried the unusual title, “Doubletake.” The curator arranged the exhibit by grouping together paintings and photographs that didn’t at first seem to belong together. His goal was to challenge visitors to view art from a fresh angle of vision, to do a “doubletake.”
In one case the curator grouped four paintings of a canal in Venice. In fact, all four painters worked from the exact same spot and painted the exact same scene. But they were hardly the same painting. Each artist saw and therefore painted something very different.
I still remember the exhibit. I decided at the beginning of the Covid shutdown to apply “Doubletake” to my study of the Bible. I chose to memorize, or rememorize, a number of Psalms, which I then used as prayers in my morning devotions. I applied the idea of “Doubletake” to how I grouped them.
The “Doubletake” that has come to mean the most to me is the juxtaposition of Psalm 90 and Psalm 84.
Psalm 90 reminds us of humanity’s crushing mortality. The Psalm contrasts God’s eternity and human finitude. We are fragile, like grass that flourishes in the morning dew but fades and withers in the afternoon heat. In contrast, God is eternal, powerful, and wrathful; God stands in judgment of human foolishness and rebellion. The poet FEELS the contrast, too. It overwhelms him. He sees how small and finite he is. Thus he prays, “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.”
Psalm 84 reads very differently. The Psalm extols how beautiful God is, how gracious and kind, how generous in his provision. It expresses longing for God. “How lovely is thy dwelling place, O Lord of hosts. My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord, my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.” The Psalm confesses that God is a “sun and shield;” God bestows “favor and honor;” God never withholds good from those who know and fear God.
The two Psalms don’t seem to belong together. But there is a “Doubletake” to be found all the same. Both Psalms mention the word “thousand.” Psalm 90 reads: “For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.” Psalm 84 also refers to a thousand (days not years), but in a very different context. “For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.”
Psalm 90 states that a thousand years is nothing to God. But not so with us. It dwarfs us. We will never get close to living a thousand years, not even a hundred years. We might make it to 80. Even then the span of those 80 years, the Psalmist says, is full of toil and trouble. “They are soon gone, and we fly away.”
We are finite; our years are numbered. But when we take time to number them, that is, to ponder our mortality, we gain a heart of wisdom.
Psalm 84 shows us what such wisdom will do for us. It consists of seizing the day and seeking God’s face. One day in the presence of God is better than a thousand days doing anything else. This is how we “number our days,” according to Psalm 90, and thus “gain a heart of wisdom.” We recognize that duration of time—say, living a long and healthy and prosperous life—is far less valuable than knowing and loving and worshiping God for only one day.
Our culture promises to lengthen life. The average life span is far longer, at least in the west, than it was a hundred years ago. That seems a marvel. But is it? “A day in thy courts is a better than a thousand elsewhere.” One day lived well is better than a thousand lived poorly. The Psalmist continues, “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of God than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.”
The “Doubletake” is a thousand. A thousand years is like one day to God because God experiences all of time as the present. A thousand years to us reminds of our smallness, vulnerability, and finitue. But one day can become to us like a thousand because we know the God who transcends time, which turns every moment into an eternal now.