Dear Faith Family, 

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

Heard about it.  Read about it.  But still wasn’t ready for the painful heartache that the flowers released.  It was just another Monday.  A restaurant near the gas pumps seemed a wise choice for my desperately thirsty truck.  Never mind that just six days earlier the very same parking lot was stained with the life blood of a young mother.  The flowers made it all too real.  But that was Monday. 

Today?  The flowers are gone.  The scene?  Normal (except for the families for whom it’s not).  Just another Wednesday.  Today the absence of flowers released a new heartache.  This life is fragile.  Short.  Unpredictable. 

So, teach us to number our days.  But how?  How do we number our days?  The median age of the U.S. population is 38.8 years.  Subtract that number from the average life expectancy from the United States Life Tables, 73.7 years.  What we have left, on average, is 34.9 years (more or less).  Or 12,748 days.  Or 305,975 hours.  Or 18,358,516 minutes.  Or 1,101,511,008 seconds.  Ok, ok, he said to number our days.  But why?  What happens when we don’t count our days?  Do we then treat our days as if they don’t count? 

The last warm chocolate chip cookie in the jar or the last scoop of Bryer’s mint chocolate chip ice cream in the carton really count!  What if today is your last day?  I don’t know of a better way to begin to make our lives count than to begin to count our days. 

Once the brevity of life wears a number, we are ready to invest more wisely.  If we have an unlimited bank account, losing a few dollars here and there makes little difference.  However, if our dollars are limited and few, we tend to invest them more wisely. 

Here’s the point, (no it isn’t to cause you to be discouraged with the shortness of this life): invest your life serving the God who created you on purpose.  Don’t frivolously waste your life investing the few days that you have living for whatever makes you happy today. 

Counting days that count, 
Pastor Karl