Make it Count

Psalm 90 is a psalm written by Moses. He starts off talking about God as "our dwelling place" but quickly devolves into how brief our lives are and how angry God is.

The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away. Who considers the power of Your anger, and Your wrath according to the fear of you? (Psa 90:10-11)

Kind of scary, actually. "Life is short and God is really mad." So Moses offers this sugestion. Actually a prayer.

So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. (Psa 90:12)

Life is short and God is mad, so teach us to number our days. Interesting approach.

It might seem odd at first, but it really makes sense. For most of us we go through life without regard to the brevity of life. "Am I going to die? Sure, maybe, someday. Not now. I'll put off that thought. Is God angry at sin? Sure, maybe, even probably. But I'll put that off, too, and deal with it when it gets closer to being an issue." So we run about in pursuits of the inane and the insane. The woman, Folly, "is loud; she is seductive and knows nothing," Solomon wrote (Prov 9:13). This personified Foolishness offers pleasures (Prov 9:17) that result in death (Prov 9:18). So, yeah, let's pursue pleasures, whatever that might be. More stuff, more power, more fame, more comfort, more ... whatever I feel like. Whatever feels good to me. Because I've got lots of time and maybe God's not happy about my choices, but He's not here right now, is He. (No, I didn't fail to put a question mark there. We make it a statement.)

We are "a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes." (James 4:14). Designed for eternity, we think that these 70 or 80 (ooo, maybe even 100) years or so are the most important. So we order our priorities accordingly. We try to get the most out of these fleeting years. Only "the most" is confusing to us. Turns out that it's not comfort or stuff. Turns out that life is actually very short, so we should have an entirely different mindset. We should be numbering our days, making every moment count, making the best use of the time (Col 4:5). The tyranny of the urgent typically outweighs the important, and the important is not informed by God's perceptions of what is or isn't important. We ought to pray, "So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom." We ought to make that a constant prayer.