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Number Our Days

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

As I prepared to consider another verse today, I opened the journal in which I keep my blog postings, and scrolled through the headings. This entry is on page 198. Soon, I’m going to have to add headings for the month of August. I feel a little like the Calvin & Hobbes strip in which Calvin freaks out because it’s a little later than it was, and their summer was slipping by. And, from my conversations with other adults – especially older adults – that’s a common feeling. Summer barely begins and the kids are going back to school. It’s the first day of school, and an eye-blink later, it’s Christmas or graduation. We’re walking down the aisle to our marriage, and the next thing you know, there is a death or divorce.

I’ve mentioned before that when I’m travelling somewhere for the first time, the trip seems to take forever because I don’t have enough (or any) signposts to tell me how far I’ve gone. That’s how it is when we’re kids. We have a whole life ahead of us, and there’s plenty of time for all the stuff. As we get older, we may notice more signposts, or we may notice that we haven’t accomplished some things by the time we thought we should. An emotional “biological clock” starts ticking. The more that we think we must accomplish, the louder the ticks.

On the one hand, we need to learn to number our days, realizing that there are things we need to get done. On the other hand, we need to learn that God will accomplish in and through us what He wants to because He numbered our days before we were born. We must simultaneously recognize we don’t have forever and that we have enough. We should take care not to waste or fritter our time away but recognize that God’s timing is impeccable.

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