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aturday
morning when I woke up I noticed something very different about my house. Everything in my room was just where I left
it when I went to bed last evening.
Nothing in the living room or the kitchen had been disturbed. My cat, Trixie, was snoozing for a few more
minutes before my activity roused her from a sound sleep and the door was
tightly closed and locked as it had been when I checked before retiring for the
night.
Although
everything appeared normal, I knew something wasn’t quite right. You know how it is, don’t you? Despite outward appearances, something things
aren’t the way they ought to be and the thing that bugs you is, you can’t
figure out the missing piece to the puzzle.
As I ran through my checklist, it suddenly dawned on me what amiss in my
house—it was too quiet!
Now
don’t get me wrong. Since I live by
myself, it is never noisy here and Trixie never makes that much noise except
when she wants to get my attention.
There is, however, a sound that goes unnoticed except when it is
absent. That sound, is the ticking of
the clock hanging on my living room wall just beside my television. No matter where I am in the house, if I pause
and listen, I can hear it ticking, just as it is right now. Saturday morning, however, there was no such
sound because during the night, the clock had stopped. Time ceased to exist in my house at exactly
10:58 p.m.
Later
Saturday morning, I finally had time to wind and set the clock and get things
back to normal in my home. I took the
key from its hiding place, opened the clock’s casing, and began to wind both
the pendulum and chime springs. That
clock has been apart of my life for the past 30 years and has faithfully marked
the time through all of them. My mom and
dad gave me the clock as a Christmas present in 1985 and I have treasured it
ever since and when it stops I want to get it running just as soon as I can.
While
winding the clock, I had occasion to think back over the last 30 years and
consider how I had spent all that time.
I came to the realization that some of my time had been well spent, some
of it had been wasted, and for a lot of it, I had absolutely no idea how I had
spent it. 30 years represents a bunch of
pendulum swings, an incalculable number of tics and tocks, and thousands of
seconds that can never be recaptured.
Once passed, they are forever gone, never to return.
Moses
knew the importance of making the best of the time God has given us. In Psalm 90:12
he writes these words, “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a
heart of wisdom.” Notice that Moses recognizes several
truths in the brief passage from his prayer in Psalm 90. First, our days can be numbered and are
numbered. We only have a certain number
of them so each one must count. As
Christians, we recognize that God gives us our days and we are to use them for
His glory, living each one of them in such a way as to share the good news of
Jesus Christ with all those around us.
Second,
our days have a purpose. That purpose,
Moses reminds us, is to gain a heart of wisdom.
The writer of the book of Proverbs reminds us that “the fear of the Lord
is the beginning of wisdom.” So gaining
a heart of wisdom and living our lives accordingly means we learn to fear, that
is to revere, honor, and worship, the Lord in all we say, do, or think.
Third
and last, Moses realizes our days can be wasted and our time here lost and
unaccounted for. That is why he asks the
Lord to teach us how to number our days correctly. That is, how to use them for God’s glory and
for His intended purposes instead of our own.
This is a very difficult thing for us to learn because we want to
believe our time is our own to spend as we will. In reality, our time is borrowed from God and
we will give an account to Him for the manner in which we have spent it.
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