A prayer for wisdom in numbering our days – Psalm 90 : 12

Numbering your days – what does this mean in practical terms? How are we supposed to do this? To make this clear, for a moment compare life with a book with each day having a new page. At night, we turn over the page – another day! However, no matter how many pages the book you are reading has, eventually you will come to the final page. Well, the same applies to the book of our life. Also concerning this book, eventually there will come a day that we will reach the final page, i.e. the page where it no longer reads, “to be continued”, but instead it will read “The End!” That’s the day, when we will die. Unless Christ returns earlier, one day we all will come to that final page of the book of our life.

New Year Eve 2012 – another year has passed. Back to the image of the book, we have come one year closer to the final page. How quickly it went. Time flies by, as we often say it. Somewhere I read, time is like water, if you try to hold on to it, it slips through your fingers and disappears. Well, this happened also to the Year 2012. It slipped through our fingers, just like that. A few more hours, and the Year 2012 will have disappeared. This leaves all of us with this question: as time flies by, how do we number our days.

In Psalm 90, Moses prays for the Israelites that they may number their days in such a way that as fruit of this numbering they may receive a heart of wisdom. Well, that’s how we too should number our days: to gain wisdom!

What kind of wisdom? The answer is very simple: wisdom in seeing God’s hand in our life, God’s hand in each day and each night of the past year. That’s how this on New Year’s Eve we should take time, also in the family circle, to reflect upon the year gone by, closing the year off in a different way than the world around us does it. Out in the world tonight, people are just partying the year away with yet another stubby, another glass of wine or champagne, just to forget for a moment the bitter reality of life. However, they are simply deceiving themselves. When tomorrow morning they wake up with a tremendous hangover, they will have to conclude that nothing has changed. Life just carries on as before.

 In faith, we know it’s different. Reflecting upon another year gone by, we know also 2012 was a year of the LORD; a year that brought us closer to Christ’s return, i.e. closer to the final destination of our life. That’s how in faith we reflect upon the year gone by, seeing God’s hand in all the events that took place during the past year.  Have you seen God’s hand in all these events? After all – even though in many ways it surpassed our understanding – none of these events happened by chance, but they all came from God’s fatherly hand.

See, that’s wisdom, if you can see it like this. If we can see it like this also concerning all the events that took place in our personal life during the year gone by: God’s hand when there were joyful days to number, but also when there were sad days to number, days of which at the time we perhaps thought, how will I ever get through this day? Yet God carried us through.

So in numbering all these days of the past year can you say that you have gained wisdom? Or to say it in more personal way, can you say that through all that happened during the past year in the world as well as in your personal life > on this New Year’s Eve can you say 2012 has brought me closer to God. If that is the case, you have numbered well.

2012 – the year is almost gone. As from midnight, all that has happened during this year belongs to the past. It’s passed, we cannot turn it around: the things we did wrong, for example. Yet, instead of therefore trying to forget them, since we can’t change it anyway, perhaps we should give them some thought, acknowledging also the dark pages of our life, which there were during the past year, pages with our sins all over it. In addition, where we have confessed to God what was written on those dark pages, next, let the light of God’s grace shine over them and rejoice. That’s how despite the many things we did wrong during past year, we still may close off this year on a high note, by clinging to God. When doing so, don’t forget to count also the many blessings God bestowed upon you during the past year, thanking Him for it.

Numbering your days in faith makes you wise, wise in Jesus Christ, who came into this world, assumed our flesh, a true human nature, in which He numbered 33 years with us. 33 years, during which our Lord and Saviour bore in body and soul the wrath of God against the sin of the whole human race. He did so for us, for you and me, in our place, so that today we may number our days in the light of God’s grace, no matter how dark at times it may seem from a physical point of view. In faith we may look beyond this and in doing so we may number our days differently.

When reflecting upon the year gone by this way, we can only stand in awful admiration of God’s wonderful grace during each day of the past year. Then we look at all that we received, not only materially, but also spiritually, and this despite the many sins and shortcomings there daily were from our side, despite the lack of zeal and thankfulness there often was from our side. Despite all this – instead of having been consumed by God’s wrath, God’s mercies were new every morning. Yes, then one stands in awe of the goodness of the LORD: “LORD, how great is Thy faithfulness towards me a sinner”

I wish all who read this a blessed 2013. We keep numbering, how long still. None of us knows. The Year 2013 might be the year of Christ’s return. It might also be that during the coming year we will face the day that it no longer reads “to be continued”, but “The End!” instead. Is this something to be scared off? It’s not when we keep numbering our days in faith, holding God’s hand; the hand which guides history and which guides also your and my life. In that knowledge, with that wisdom given from above, we will be able to cope, whatever 2013 may have in store for us.