“So teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom” Psalm 90:12
As my recent retirement approached, I began a countdown: “Days to May 15=101”— writing the declining number on my whiteboard as part of a morning ritual. When my wife saw the whiteboard, she chided me, “Isn’t that unkind? Won’t that make your colleagues sad or a little jealous?”
“I’m just doing what Moses advised in the Psalms, numbering my days,” was my wry reply.
But the next morning, I felt uneasy. Hadn’t I frequently numbered my days? Every syllabus I had created for the last thirty years had listed a schedule of lectures. That disastrous second semester of my teaching career still haunted me, reminding me to never run out of the time needed to cover the required material.
Vita Brevis
Thinking back over my career, I laid down my marker and did a brief calculation. “How many days has it been? Let’s see. . . 30 years times 365 is approximately . . . 11,000 days! Seemed like so many days starting out, but in the rear view mirror they are an eye-blink, just like the cliché.
“Ars longa, vita brevis” I muttered to myself, “Art is long, life is short. When I was a sprout, I thought that I would live forever. But now? Days to May 15–85. Days to ???”
Big Mike’s
I took my contemplation on life to Big Mike’s–a somewhat popular coffee house near my office. I ordered my usual, took a table “to get re-caffeinated,” and pulled out my phone, tapping on the Bible app. A quick search brought another challenging cross-reference: “O LORD, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am! (Psalm 39:4)”
“How cheery!” I mused. “What have I been doing with the 11,000+ days that I have been given?”
Just then, a former student crowded into the coffee shop and caught sight of me.
“Hey Doc! Remember me?” she cried.
“Oh course, Annalissa! What have you been up to since . . . ?”
“Last fall?” she supplied.
“Thanks. Time flies!”
“I want to tell you how much your class meant to me,” she continued. “From the first day when you let us know that you were a Christ-follower, and then the way you cared about all of us . . . . Well, like that was simply awesome! It meant a lot to me. I just wanted to say ‘Thank you’.”
“Ah . . . You’re welcome.”
I soon left the coffee shop wondering, “What did I do with all those days? Maybe, by God’s grace, something eternal and miraculous happened.”
An unreasonable joy welled up in me, reinforcing my resolve to number my days–no matter how many or how few.
— A Recently Retired Prof (but still numbering my days)