Number Our Days

             Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. (Psalm 90:12)

            I have said before that wisdom is dealing with reality as reality, but today’s passage involves one of the pieces of reality that we don’t tend to get. Sometimes, we sing along, “There’s always…tomorrow… for dreams to come true…” meaning that we procrastinate and maybe lose our chance. Some of us sing, “Yesterday, all my trouble seemed so far away…how I long for yesterday…” with the same result. Sometimes, we put things away “for special” and may end up never using it. Or, we dream of a time when some special thing will happen, … and … then…  we will so what it is we’ve wanted to do. Then, there are the times when we think, “I have plenty of time.” What if we don’t?

            We don’t have unlimited time to do things. At some point God will close the books on our lives here. No matter how many days we have – and most of us don’t know how many that is – it won’t be enough, especially if we don’t get to work on some of them today.

            There is no way to get everything done we think we should, or that we think we’d like to. If we follow God, we’ll get the important stuff done.

            Holding on to yesterday too tightly keeps us from the good to be found today or tomorrow.

            Holding on to the desired possibilities of tomorrow keeps us from the good to be found in the past, or even today.

            Have you ever kept a record of what you did? Not what you wanted to do, but what you actually did, and how much time you spent doing it? For example, you might say you spent 30 minutes cleaning the kitchen. You may have spent ten minutes cleaning the kitchen, with the rest of the time spent daydreaming, looking at recipe cards, making a grocery list, arguing with an imaginary opponent, or even eating. Those might not be bad things. I’m not suggesting that any of us do one of those inventories – it would be too traumatic for me – but the point is that we tend to waste a lot of time without realizing it.

            So maybe, just maybe, today’s passage is one we should pray once in a while.