There are times when it all seems too much for us. We get tired of the strain of responsibility and we long to be free from its weight. We even get tired of ourselves and our failures, especially the number of times we have resolved to do or to be better, and then have fallen again.

Take the greatest treasury of devotion, the book of Psalms, and if you go through its pages, taking this psalm and that, you will notice how brutally honest it is. It paints the whole picture, warts and all. Its hates and its loves are all poured out before God.

Now notice this, again and again God is addressed as ‘My rock, my refuge, my tower, my shield, my life, my salvation, my fortress’. Now honestly, doesn’t that ring a bell? In face of our weakness remember a germ can kill us – our fear when death and dying haunt us, and we realise the shortness of our life – we are not here on earth for long doesn’t something in you cry out for something which doesn’t change and decay – for someone in fact, who changes not, in whom you can truly repose?

Well, that’s not only where faith begins, it’s where it ends too, for the Psalms also say, ‘Be still and know that I am God, I will be exalted’. Today’s reading is one of those which puts us in our place, but remember it cries out for the answering word and deed of Jesus, who alone meets our hunger for eternity.

Now read: Psalm 90: 1-6 and 12-14.