Numbering My Days

Just a couple of months ago, I recited a portion of Psalm 90 as my toast at my best friend’s wedding. “Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” The words are coming back to me today, as I fail to esteem the moments that make up my life—wishing them to feel somehow differently than they, in fact, do. As if I knew, for a moment, the things that make for happiness!

The Psalm resumes immediately with this cry, “Return, O Lord! How long? Have pity on your servants! Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, and for as many years as we have seen evil. Let your work be shown to your servants, and your glorious power to their children. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands!”How many times in Scripture do we read that our mourning will be turned to gladness? That the Lord will restore the years that the locusts have eaten? There are so many ways that the Bible expresses this idea that our suffering is purposeful both in this life and in the next. So I am resting in that hope.

Practically, the headache has not returned at all and my spine is a bit less sore. My feet and legs are more swollen than they have been, though, so you might not notice that I’m walking with any more ease than I was yesterday. But I am! I have no real news today, other than the word of my neurologist appointment on Wednesday at 10:30AM. It is very likely that I will receive an actual diagnosis at this time, so you can imagine that I have mixed feelings as I look ahead. You may pray with me this Psalm tonight (102: 18-28)—

MEDITATION: Let this be recorded for a generation to come, so that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord: that he looked down from his holy height; from heaven the Lord looked at the earth, to hear the groans of the prisoners, to set free those who were doomed to die (such was I!)…

APPLICATION: that they may declare in Zion the name of the Lord, and in Jerusalem his praise, when peoples gather together, and kingdoms, to worship the Lord. He has broken my strength in midcourse; he has shortened my days…

SUPPLICATION: “O my God,” I say, “Take me not away in the midst of my days—you whose years endure throughout all generations!” Of old you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away, but you are the same, and your years have no end. The children of your servants shall dwell secure; their offspring shall be established before you.It is a privilege to me to be on both the giving and the receiving end of this comfort in affliction (II Cor. 1:4).

May the Lord continue to build us into a body willing to share in his comforts and in his afflictions. I love you dearly.