Learning to Count the Days
I recently turned thirty-seven years old. In athletic terms, I’m defying Father Time. I’m the age Mickey Mantle retired “too late.” Not clocking out now would put me in an article alongside a few other old codgers who need to admit it’s time to go.
Thirty-seven is a surprisingly odd number. It’s a turning point of sorts, where things start feeling different. According to some research, it’s the age many begin feeling old and it’s also considered the most boring age. The dreams of my twenties are behind me, and the reality of my thirties is almost over. I know there is still so much left to do and learn and experience. After all, according to Wikipedia, “37 is the smallest prime that is not also a supersingular prime” so there is room to grow, I guess. But then I think to myself, “I don’t even know what that means, and shouldn’t I by this age?”
It’s been over twenty years since Tim McGraw first sang “My Next Thirty Years.” I can’t imagine how McGraw feels about that fact, but I’m already seven years into those lyrics and the line “cry a little less, laugh a little more” suddenly feels like a struggle.
On the bright side, not all is yet lost. Chris Hemsworth is thirty-seven, and have you seen Thor lately? I know he’s a Norse god, but Hemsworth isn’t, and he looks okay for his age. I’m about ten thousand push-ups away from picking up Thor’s hammer and, honestly, I’m not sure my back could handle it anyway. So, I’ll look to other goals.
“My days have always been numbered, but I guess it takes some years before you learn to count. ”
What I’m trying to say is time is slipping away faster than ever. My days have always been numbered, but I guess it takes some years before you learn to count.
I know thirty-seven sounds young to some of you, but it’s as old as I’ve ever been. And it’s got me, like Moses, asking for a heart of wisdom (Ps. 90:12).
From Everlasting to Everlasting
Isaac Watts wrote, “Time, like an ever-rolling stream, soon bears us all away. We fly forgotten, as a dream dies at the op’ning day.”
It was a forgotten dream that started me writing. I awoke the day after my 37th birthday with the ever-rolling stream sweeping me away. Suddenly, as the night’s dreams died away, I was more aware of the One who is from everlasting to everlasting, whose endless years are the same.
The everlasting God of Psalm 90 is praised not as an eternal “there” but as the eternal “here.” God has always been, and since he created man, he has always been ours. His everlasting-ness preexisted his creation, and we would do well to remember that.
Derek Kidner says of Psalm 90, “Only Isaiah 40 can compare with this psalm for its presentation of God’s grandeur and eternity over against the frailty of man . . . In an age which was readier than our own to reflect on mortality and judgment, this psalm was an appointed reading (with 1 Cor. 15) at the burial of the dead: a rehearsal of the facts of death and life which, if it was harsh at such a moment, wounded to heal” (Derek Kidner, Psalms 73–150: An Introduction and Commentary, 359).
It is good to be reminded that we are dust and to dust we shall return (Ps. 90:3). Our days seem to us so important and full of meaning. We establish ourselves as monumental. But to God, a thousand years are but as yesterday or as a watch in the night (Ps. 90:4). God sits above time, seeing it all at once. Our lives are but a blip on the eternal radar, while the Divine Air Traffic Controller sits above it all. We’re all on the way to somewhere great while God sees the truth—it’s all a bunch of flying through the air. He’s seen it all before, everlasting to everlasting.
Teach Me to Count
That’s not to say our lives are pointless. Far from it, actually. The Bible never downplays man’s meaning. In fact, God gives us more dignity than we give ourselves. He made us in his image. It is we who modulate it downward. We dull the high notes. We buff the shine out of the image. By our sin, we set ourselves before the wrath of God.
Our problem is the misunderstanding of our purpose. In this big old world with so many places to go, we’re looking for a kingdom built with our own two hands. Self-made never seems to be out of style. We step into our homes each night, comforted by what we’ve done or discouraged by what we didn’t do. Either way, it comes down to us. That’s why even the best of places can feel so foreign at times, as if we were made for another place without all the cracks.
We find our home only in the dwelling place of all generations. And like going home at the end of a long day and finding the reflection of the bathroom mirror less than flattering, in God’s presence our secret sins and iniquities come out in his light (Ps. 90:8). Kidner says we have, before God’s all-seeing eye, “No resource and no excuse” (Psalms 73–150, 361). We’re open and exposed and no makeup can cover what we really are.
Of course, the truth of our state must be brought home to us by God. We can redirect our gaze. We can turn on the TV. The internet has enough frivolity to amuse us to death. So, by grace, God teaches us to number our days—not to bring us down to where we really belong but to raise us up to the wisdom we need for living.
The God of Grace
A life half lived (which, according to life expectancies, is about where I am) is more than long enough to prove the cry of Job’s friend Eliphaz: “Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward” (Job 5:7).
But throughout our lives, short as they are, there is grace to behold. “Let your work be shown to your servants, and your glorious power to their children” (Ps. 90:16). For all that makes life less than what we want, the grace of God makes it far more than we could ever wish. But we need the eyes to see it. Those eyes come with the wisdom of many days lived. For all that we do, wisdom comes from seeing what God does.
“But throughout our lives, short as they are, there is grace to behold.”
The older we get, if God so pleases to show us, the more we see how unworthy we are of the work of God. But it is the wisdom of age that shows us that we are the work of God. “For we are his workmanship” (Eph. 2:10). Our life might be a mess because of sin and failure, but we are, by grace, his mess.
As Isaac Watts penned so long ago, “O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, still be our guard while troubles last, and our eternal home.”
David McLemore is an elder at Refuge Church in Franklin, Tennessee. He also works for a large healthcare corporation where he manages an application development department. He is married to Sarah, and they have three sons. Read more of David’s writing on his blog, Things of the Sort.