Establish the Work of Our Hands
Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash
I don’t know about you, but it seems like Summer is getting shorter every year. Now that August is here, I’ve found myself sitting at my desk most nights, mulling over my checklist of all the things I need to do to prepare for the Fall season.
Once upon a time, the Fall season mostly meant celebrating my favorite things like the cooler weather, warm fancy drinks, admiring the colorful leaves, and the anticipation of my favorite holidays of the year. Now, it also marks the beginning of homeschool and resuming rhythms that involve a lot less free and unstructured time. In some ways I am craving the rhythm that comes with this approaching season, but in other ways I can feel my anxious tendency to over plan and overthink rise.
With all the work set before me, it’s tempting to take matters into my own hands and go full steam ahead with what I’ve planned only to run empty halfway through. After falling flat many times over the years, I recognize that I need to take a different approach. I can’t remember how I landed in Psalm 90, but the night that I did, the passage truly blessed me and gave me language for a prayer I couldn’t find words for.
“Let the favor of the Lord our God be on us; establish for us the work of our hands. ” -Psalms 90:17 CSB
In Psalm 90, Moses acknowledges the omnipotent God who transcends time. He notates the differences between our humanity and his deity. He is eternal, existing before all things and creator of all things; we are mortal, having been born and subject to death (v. 2, 10). He is infallible and holy; we are fallible and sinful (v. 7-8). Moses prays to God, fully understanding that he and the Israelites need Him to do what He commands with the time that they are given on Earth. Verse 17 stood out to me because “establish the work of our hands” was written twice. When something is mentioned more than once in the Bible, I like to slow down and take note. The word establish in the dictionary means to set up. The Hebrew word for establish is “kuwn” and there are several meanings to include prepare and make ready. So, putting this all together, I understood that Moses didn’t just recognize his need for God, he then asked God to set up or prepare for them the work they needed to do.
We don’t have to assume what God wants when we have access to enter His presence freely and boldly (Hebrews 4:16). It is wise for us to seek God’s wisdom so that we steward our time well in these earthly bodies. He created each of us with specific assignments in mind. It’s easy to get distracted because there are a lot of things we can and want to do, but they cause us to drift off course. This is how we can get overwhelmed. It’s good to seek clarity with each season of life as some things may no longer be a priority. Once clarity is received, we must be ok with letting go of some things we want to cling to or be willing to add to our plates when we’d rather be comfortable. Daily we should ask God to make ready our hands to do His will. We need His strength, peace, and favor.
When we submit our plans to God, we can work from a place of rest instead of anxiety, knowing that whatever He has called us to He’s given us grace to do and has made the provisions for us to do it. This may sound like basic knowledge, but we are prone to forget as we get busy in the doing. Brothers and sisters, let us remember that the Lord is with us wherever we go and takes pleasure in showing us the way.
