By Francis Judge
Depending on what, or who you believe orders your days, the statement ‘your days are numbered’ will either evoke fear of faith, uncertainty or security; either making you feel pressured for time or impatient for the fulfilment of a promise. It should amaze us how our perspective determines what we see, understand, and believe about ourselves.
Psalm 90:12 in the CSB says, “Teach us to number our days carefully, so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts.” Our attitudes add to our wisdom and understanding, or they undermine our confidence and identity. Let’s dig a little deeper into what the Psalmist was wanting us to understand about this.
He starts by requesting the Lord. Isn’t he mistaken? Doesn’t the Lord already know and automatically give us what we need? Many of us act like this is what we believe, even if we say we don’t. Mysteriously, God wants us to partner with him in everything – even the obvious things – and he teaches us to pray, “Give us today our daily bread” (Matt 6:11). Partnering with the Lord is more important to him than our sense of security or knowing long-term details. Please don’t misunderstand me about this, the Lord does not want us to be mindless robots or fearful wimps! But he does want us to live in loving dependence on him all the days of our lives.
So, Lord, please teach us to number our days carefully.
But what does that mean? At the very least, it means to redeem the time (Cf. Eph 5:16); to make the most of every opportunity and moment. We need to make our plans, ‘numbering our days carefully’, but we also need to do so while actively engaging the Lord and his priorities. We sometimes ask, “Where will you be in five years’ time?” To which we should answer, “the Lord knows, and he told me to prepare for such and such”.
Our days are numbered. He wants them to be full in number (Cf. Gen 35:29) and, most especially, full of him. If we act on this, we can have great assurance that in what we have planned – that is, in his presence and have given ourselves to – our steps (Ps 37:5) will be guided by him. If we haven’t planned in his presence, then we will always feel like we don’t have enough time for the things that we have planned. He has numbered our days to make us successful in partnership with him.
Not only has he numbered our days but also our steps (Cf. Ps 37:23-24) and even the hairs on our heads (Lk 12:7), all to reassure us of his love for us and his desire to be involved in all of our lives. Numbering is reserved for the Lord, though. David was convicted when he counted Israel in Second Samuel 24:1 because he should not have been relying on their numbers (i.e., military might) but on the Lord. Yet the Lord had commanded Moses to count all of Israel – except the Levites, so there was no exact figure – for tax purposes!
God is not scared to number or define. He has put boundaries in place for us (Acts 17:26) and the Psalmist tells us that they are designed to be pleasant for us (Ps 16:6). We can have no fear when we hear that he has numbered our days because he is ordering our ways and all for his pleasure and according to his plan.
October is the tenth month of our calendar, yet the word means eighth! Sometimes, our human calculations are ‘off’, and where we think we are, is not where we actually are – literally, metaphorically, and spiritually. This is yet another reason for us to make our plans and order our steps before the Lord to gain his insight.
In Galatians 4:4, Paul tells us of the perfection in the timing of Jesus’ birth. The word fullness in this text speaks of completion and perfection. Jesus’ days were numbered perfectly, even the day of his birth. It can be hard sometimes to recognise this when we do not have the exact date of his birth. I believe this was because of our propensity to worship the event of his birth rather than gone one who had ordained and numbered its date (Cf. Rom 1:25).
Likewise, Jesus’s death seems premature, violent, and pitiable to us. But, again, Paul tells us in Acts 2:23-24 that Jesus’ crucifixion happened according to the “determined plan and foreknowledge of God” (LEB). God did not crucify Jesus, we did – all sinful mankind – but he knew about it and chose it as his perfect way to deal with the problem of Sin, both in the world and in us.
Paul, in contrast, describes his own ‘timing’ in 1 Corinthians 15:8 as being born at the ‘wrong’ time (LEB). The exact meaning of this verse has seen many interpretations, but in terms of what we are looking at here, Paul does not doubt the timing of God for his life, but, rather, that he was not one of the original apostles – he wanted to know Jesus more, not less!
All of this, according to Psalm ninety verse twelve, is so the Lord can develop wisdom in us, and we can realise that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord (Prov 9:10). He wants us to be wise; wise with a wisdom that is applicable to every situation; but it is our attitude to his ‘numbering’ of our days that determines what we are able to learn and how wise we will become.