TEACH US TO NUMBER OUR DAYS

The Bible in Psalm 90:10-12, gives some important wisdom as we progress through life. The Message, by John W Peterson, records them as: "We live for seventy years or so (with luck we might make it to eighty), And what do we have to show for it? Trouble. Toil and trouble and a marker in the graveyard. Oh! Teach us to live well! Teach us to live wisely and well!" The King James Version says of verse 12, "So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom."

The older I get, the faster life goes by, and the more I am learning to understand that we need to learn to number our days, to learn to live wisely, so we can apply our hearts to wisdom and not foolishness. I recently heard that life is like a roll of toilet paper, the closer you get to the end, the faster it goes! All too soon we wind up with a marker in the graveyard. Before we get there, it would be good to reflect on what we hope our life will mean. We often do many things to avoid thinking about the reality of our death, but so far the morality rate is 100%.

    The key is not how long we live, but how well we live. The man who is recorded as the oldest man in the Bible lived to be 969 years old. I was fascinated to discover that he died in the year of the flood. There is no record that he died in the flood, but there is none that says he didn't. Wouldn't it be something if the man who lived longer than anyone else recorded in the Scripture, was a victim of the flood? That would mean he was a part of the sinful world God destroyed, revealing that just attaining old age is of little value.

    I want to learn to live life well, to have a sense of the number of my days, and do all I can such that one day I will be able to look back and have the satisfaction that I didn't do too bad. That will happen one day at a time, making each day count. I know I won't do it perfectly, but I want to my life count.

    It will be of utmost importance to have made peace with God. He has done all the hard work. When humanity was held hostage to the horrors of sin, God raised the ransom, by giving His only begotten Son, who was brutally executed, buried, and raised from the dead. He who knew no sin, became sin, so that we could be forever free. He tells me that if I will simply confess my "stuff", my sins, and my failures, no matter how awful they are, He would be faithful and just to forgive me and to clean me up from the inside out.

I also want at last, to lay my head on the pillow knowing that as much as it is my responsibility, I will be at peace with everyone else. So often we wait until we are facing death to apologize and reach out to people from whom we have been alienated. Living well and wisely surely include making peace with the people in our lives.

    I hope and pray that as I pass through this life, I can do some things that will be a comfort and blessing to those I meet along the way, for I believe it will be that kind of life that will hear those precious words, "Well done, faithful servant..." I have a hunch it will be a calculated life, devoted to wisdom and not folly.