Numbering Our Days

So, teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom. (Psalm 90:12)

Recently, when I slept, this verse appeared as one long dream from the start of my sleeping to the end of it. I woke up with my heart troubled for a reason I do not know. I tried to study and muse what it could have meant, and I think I’d have comprehended part of it in today’s piece;

Firstly, we notice that the title of this chapter is ‘a prayer of Moses.’ It wasn’t another of David’s adorable adorations to the Almighty. This was Moses, somewhere in the Arabian desert, having noticed thousands of the Israelites dying.

Some of them could probably have been children he saw being born in his 40th year, and before they turned 35, he saw them die! Troubling, like Ecclesiastes states, anyone with an element of wisdom is forced to think about death, triggered by that 30-year-old deceased.

‘He died young… He left two children behind… His parents are still alive… Wonder where he is now…’ These caused Him to write. I noticed he is addressing God in a form of agony. He of course mingles it with praise.

He states that God existed before the mountains came up; meaning God existed outside the realm of time, or before time ever came into being. Though it is not straight forward, God’s creation of the cycles of sun and moon invented time.

Wait. I’m wrong. God created light on the first day; and after separating it from the darkness, and naming them day and night, evening and morning came. Notice we are not told how long this took. Evening and morning came. The sun hadn’t come yet.

A day was only complete after God had been satisfied with what He saw, when His agenda was fully implemented. It sounds like to me an artist, painting across galaxies. It’s not mentioned whether He spilled paint, or needed to erase and resketch. One thing was for sure; evening only came when what He had created that day was good;

This means time was an illusion and not particularly 24 hours. Maybe it was 12 hours today and 48 tomorrow. (As the sun hadn’t been created yet) This is an allegory of how men die at different ages. Maybe to one, God sees that they have done what He created them to do, at their 30th age, and so He sees that what they have done is good, and so He allows evening to come over them in death. If the sun was the first thing to be created, and the 24 hours there and then, with this scenario, it would have meant that evening came after those hours, as if to say, we all die at the same age, which isn’t so.

Of course, we have a hand in choosing when we might have evening come upon us, as God gave us free will. But, let’s not ignore the fact that He authored the idea of time.

So, Moses is conversing with the author of time. And He seems to be saying, “God, another person might die young soon. Don’t you think they’d love to reach the promised land? Could you be having something important for them in regards to purpose as well?”

Secondly, He asks this author of time that He’s been venting to, to teach them to number their days. He is not just asking his sister, or brother, or parent to teach Him how to do this.

The Hebrew word for number is kathabh which means to reckon (or to consider in a specific way). Moses is saying, ‘Teach us to consider in a specific way our days.’ This specific way is, I believe, that we are here today and it is such a beautiful privilege…that we are still breathing and are able to do something extra in regards to our predestined purposes.

It is a specific reflection each one of us has to have at some point in our lives and the result of this reflection will lead us to the final part of this verse; ‘…that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.’

The heart is a combination of spirit and soul, as the flesh is a combination of body and soul. Now since the soul exists both ways, it is influenced by either the spirit or body.

Moses didn’t say ‘that we may apply our flesh (body) to wisdom.’ It is as if we are being told to focus on the inward man. To feed him, for he will live forever. To set our minds on the things above, on the things unseen, on the things that that are not temporary but eternal.

I also asked myself, ‘why wisdom?’ Why not money, or chasing a spouse or a dream job. It is because wisdom (as described in the book of proverbs) is a mother to so many things.

With her is safety from evil, with her is understanding and knowledge, with her is discretion (discernment of things that are important in this life and what is not), with her is silver and gold, with her pleasantness and peace and promotion and LONG LIFE

Wisdom is a whole package, but the important thing mentioned about her; is, she was there at the beginning with God always being delighted in by He Himself in proverbs 8.

If she was there before God created time, if she was with Him, then we also need her in this equation of time. Verse 35 states whoever finds wisdom, finds favor from God. Wisdom was what told God how good a thing was before evening came.

And 1 Cor 1:30 states Christ has been made wisdom unto us. Meaning; this entire dream, this entire elucidation was an answer indirectly scribbled within Moses’ very prayer.

This is what I made of all of this. That God Almighty, the author of time, who can enable us to both be subjected to it or out of it, is the only one who can enable us escape the plight of human brevity by teaching us how to number (CONSIDER {what we were made for}, JUDGE {the weight of our purpose}, FIGURE OUT/ESTIMATE {how much time we’d be left with}, EVALUATE, GAUGE) our days, each of us, that we may apply (meaning; GIVE FULL ATTENTION) our hearts (spirits) to wisdom (to Jesus, or to the thing that existed out of time, the thing with which God determined how good any of His creation was before He’d call it a day, the thing that causes God to favor us)

It is just impossible for us to number our days without God. How many girls today write in their diaries saying, ‘I want to be married at 24’, but they are now 30! I think they tried to number their days with God teaching them how to.

I have seen those who have cultivated a deeper relationship with God be able to tell the time they’ll get married, or when they’ll have a child, or leave that job, or predict when the Kairos moment of a thing is.

They simply neglected their scripts, and asked the person who determines when evening is to come to tell them how to consider their days; and many of them, none of their steps have slid.

Stop telling yourself that life is too short and drinking it to death or delighting in vain pleasures. Face it! Be brave! Turn to the one who can redeem the time you have lost, and recreate it another chance for you to get back on track for whatever you were meant to do on earth!

The final thing I saw was how God the father is being addressed at the start of the verse, but God the son comes in under wisdom, at the end of the same. I see the words ‘I am the first and last, the beginning and the end’. I interpret it thus; God is the beginning of your life, and the end of it. He sees it all before it happens. What better guide to take you through each and everyday of your life but Him!

I believe if we go this path, we will live a long, fulfilled life with no single regrets at all. Moses’ prayer of what he saw is answered in us, so that no one has to cry at our graves on our behalf asking for more time…