Spiritual Life

Counting our days

I just celebrated my birthday and I found this article written by Professor Claude Mariottini entitled “Counting our days”, thoughtprovoking and very enlightening. Hence, I decided to share it with you, my readers.

“Teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart” (Psalm 90:12).

There are certain occasions of the year, especially birthdays, that compel us to count our days and realize how fast time passes by, which is in fact, the passing away of our lives. It is at this time of reflection, when we celebrate our birthday, a new year of life, that we realize another year is gone. Each new year of life compels us to number our days and as we do, we realize that the passing away of our days brings us closer to the day we will meet our Maker.

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). We cannot change these two fixed days in our lives, but we surely can influence what happens between the time of birth and the time of death.

This is the reason the psalmist said that we must learn to number our days in such a way that we may gain a wiser heart. If the time between life and death is the time of our education for the future, then we must learn not to waste our precious little time and throw away the opportunities the school of life offers to us. Life is a school, the place where we train daily to face the challenges of the future.

As we count our days, we cannot be indifferent and unaffected by the fact that twelve months more of life have passed away. During the passing of those twelve months, most of us have experienced joys and sorrows that will be part of our memories until the end.

Life is ephemeral. Most of us live for seventy years or so. With good health, some of us will live to eighty or even more (Psalm 90:10).