"Lord, you have been a refuge from generation to generation. Before the mountains were born and formed the earth and the world, from the century to the century, you are God."
That expression that we notice here "from the century to the century", in Hebrew has a figurative meaning. It means from a point that fades to another point that fades. God extends from that point of eternity in the past that fades into the distance, projecting to the point that fades into the future, in that eternity to come. As far as our mind can go, from one point to another, He is God. How majestic is this thought! And man is simply a creature of God, he is His offspring, so to speak. In the Book of Genesis 1:27, Moses had written: "And God created man in His image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." And then, later in the same book of Genesis 2: 7, he said: "Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the earth, breathed into his nose breath of life, and man was a living being." This psalm considers man as a created being, and not as an evolved animal. It is a creature that is in a special classification. He has a body that has been taken from the dust of the earth, a body through which he must provide himself with what is necessary here in this world through the sweat of his forehead, until the day he has to return to the dust of the earth, from which it has been formed. This is a picture of man. Let's see now, what the writer said in verse 3, of this Psalm 90:
"You turn man to dust and you say: Become, sons of men!"
God brings the fragile human being back to the dust, where it came from. Then, in verse 4, he said:
"Certainly a thousand years before your eyes are like yesterday, what happened, and like one of the vigils of the night."
Suppose, dear listener, that you live as long as Methuselah lived, for example, almost a thousand years. That period of time would be like a night vigil; like the flight of a bird through a room with light, which enters into it from the darkness outside through a window, and which comes out again through another window, into the darkness once more. Even if you lived a thousand years, it wouldn't be long, because human life is very short compared to eternity.