Teaching and Learning on 12th November 2025
For the next three weeks I’m going to think about Wintering… this time of year when we close down, ponder and retire… except if you are still at work you don’t get a chance to and that is so unhealthy. Wintering is something we need to do every year.. but society won’t let us… and as we get older wintering is the last season of life. That’s not depressing, I suggest, but gloriously liberating!
I’m sure you will all have heard the popular advice beloved of contemporary social influencers - to live in the moment. Life is too short to worry about the past or the future, so grab as much life as you can now, new experiences, new things and so on.
Which is fine if you are relatively wealthy, relatively healthy and relatively free of personal commitments. Most of us aren’t all of these things, we fall down on at least one of them!
There’s a sort of truth in living in the moment. But it’s not quite right. I am going to suggest that Jesus, though he was an itinerant preacher, living day by day and responding to the immediate demands and opportunities before him didn’t live IN the moment. Jesus, I think, lived OUT of the moment.
To live in the moment is to be guided simply by what presents itself, to accept what happens as the direction we should take. How many people, especially, but not exclusively, young ones, make stupid decisions because they simply accept what’s offered to them.
That’s what happens when we live IN the moment.
Living out of the moment also means taking notice of what’s in front of us, but with discernment and a growing wisdom. Just because we can, isn’t a good enough reason to do anything, but it’s what living IN the moment encourages us to do. Living OUT of the moment means we realise that the present moment is not a gift. Life is not a gift. And it’s unhealthy to think that it is. In the end we have to give our lives back.
Our lives are not ours to do with as we please. We may be free to choose, but we’re not free to choose the consequences of our actions. Someone else will make that decision.
Life is a loan, a “lend”, and we borrow it. But each day brings its own store of challenges, possibilities, joys and sorrows, freedoms and constraints. The mix is never the same two days running.
To live OUT of the present moment means being able to look at the whole and make choices that don’t simply depend on us being IN the moment, but growing out of the moment our choices will pay attention to the past and to the future.
We only have now, we only have today, this present moment. But NOW is where the past meets the future. It’s the bow wave of our existence carrying us along. It has, as it were, the tide behind it and the wide ocean in front of it. But that’s where the analogy stops… we’re not riding surf boards!
Right now we each have access to what we need to live out of the moment. We have a mix of physical opportunities and limitations. We have the experience of the past and the wisdom to know that we’ll probably have a tomorrow, but also the wisdom to know that the number of tomorrows is limited! We have people around us who energize us, or who drain us, or who are completely indifferent to us. This is the mix that we turn into life.
Over the next 3 weeks we’re using Psalm 90 as our Lectio Divina text.
I usually do the commentary a week later but this time I’m going to say some things before the Lectio by way of some background to help you grapple with it.
And although the text on the screen later will be a modern translation I’m going to use the Book of Common Prayer version complete with ‘thees’ and ‘thous’.
The trouble with Bible translations in modern language is that they attempt to make the Bible seem contemporary. And there’s some sense in that. But the truth is the Bible is a strange text, written in a language we probably don’t understand, certainly using idioms and ideas that we don’t really grasp and it’s important sometimes to let the strangeness of scripture speak to us and to not try and iron out the wrinkles.
Happily no translation of this psalm can avoid the very difficult passages. So my background teaching today is simply to let those hard phrases sit there. They are disturbing and puzzling. We’ll be using the first 6 verses as our Lectio - but I am going to read the whole Psalm in Coverdale’s 16th Century translation.. it is beautiful, disturbing, strange and well … what does it mean to you?
Psalm 90, like each of the Psalms in the Prayer Book has a Latin title from the opening words in the Latin translation….. Domine, refugium
Lord, thou hast been our refuge : from one generation to another.
Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made : thou art God from everlasting, and world without end.
Thou turnest man to destruction : again thou sayest, Come again, ye children of men.
For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yester-day : seeing that is past as a watch in the night.
As soon as thou scatterest them they are even as a sleep : and fade away suddenly like the grass.
In the morning it is green, and groweth up : but in the evening it is cut down, dried up, and withered.
For we consume away in thy displeasure : and are afraid at thy wrathful indignation.
Thou hast set our misdeeds before thee : and our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.
For when thou art angry all our days are gone : we bring our years to an end, as it were a tale that is told.
The days of our age are threescore years and ten; and though men be so strong that they come to fourscore years : yet is their strength then but labour and sorrow; so soon passeth it away, and we are gone.
But who regardeth the power of thy wrath : for even thereafter as a man feareth, so is thy displeasure.
So teach us to number our days : that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.
Turn thee again, O Lord, at the last : and be gracious unto thy servants.
O satisfy us with thy mercy, and that soon : so shall we rejoice and be glad all the days of our life.
Comfort us again now after the time that thou hast plagued us : and for the years wherein we have suffered adversity.
Shew thy servants thy work : and their children thy glory.
And the glorious majesty of the Lord our God be upon us : prosper thou the work of our hands upon us, O prosper thou our handywork.
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