Godly Numbering

Scripture Reading: Psalm 90:12

So, teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.

Here Moses is making a practical application of the sobering truth he just finished laying out – our lives are short.

He doesn’t mean that we, like God, can know how long our lives will be and when they will come to an end. But he is saying that we should, in a sense, think of life as if we did know. Imagine you could somehow know the exact time and manner of your death. Would it make a difference in how you lived up to that time? I suspect it would.

We would live more wisely if we remembered how brief our time was here. We would focus our energies, attention, and the use of our possessions more wisely if we lived knowing how short our days are.

That is what Moses is asking God for. Why pray for it? Why not just do it? It doesn’t seem to be in our nature to think this way. We tend to never consider the fact that our lives will end. I’ve witnessed people who, simply because of their age, make decisions that indicate they expect to live in good health for a long time to come when it isn’t reasonable to expect that. As Moses said, “The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.” But we don’t naturally accept that reality for ourselves.

And even if we do, we can easily become morbid and unhappy. We can be like Jacob who bemoaned, “The days of my sojourning are 130 years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life.” We can lose the joy of living for Christ now while living in anticipation of the death that is to come.

This is why Moses prayed that God would teach him to number his days. If he came to this from a self-educated position, he would not arrive at his desired goal. But if God taught him how to rightly number his days, how to righteously consider the brevity of life, he would then be able to apply his heart to wisdom.

We can live our lives with serious joy, making good and godly choices about what we do with our days if God is the Teacher who helps us number our days.