Psalm 90:12

Psalm 90:12

Number your days

“Teach us to number our days.” Modern society does not exactly relish this idea! We prefer to keep plodding on, to ignore the obvious, to place our trust in a Health Service that we hope will produce some kind of eternal cure. We turn a blind eye to the daily obituaries in the newspapers, and also to our own declining health as we stumble into old age. Death is rarely the subject of conversations, documentaries, or best-selling books! It’s the taboo subject, the one that is averted because no one wants to face the inevitability of their own mortality. Few are prepared for it and even fewer embrace it. And yet, the Bible offers us a different perspective, it advises that we should ask God to help us to number our days. We should pay careful attention to the lifespan we have been given and prepare ourselves to leave this world. We need to be aware that old age and sickness will eventually overtake us and our schemes and plans will be thwarted. 

Even as I write this my instinct is to play it down, to avoid the gloomy forebodings and emphasize the glory of what lies ahead. But the Bible says that to number our days is the way of wisdom. Those who are arrogant and self-seeking, who live only for themselves and who ignore God will never want to spend time pondering the shortness of life and the looming spectre of death. Over the years, I have prepared countless Estate Accounts, a record of the assets that people leave when they die. It’s eye-opening and saddening to see how so many accumulate wealth at the end of their lives, for their greatest comfort is found in what they own and how well they have done for themselves. God wants to remind us that there are bigger priorities, “Get life in perspective, live for today and be wise enough to know that your time passes very quickly. Use it well, you could be gone tomorrow, live for me and with me, not for yourselves.” That is wisdom.

 

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