Earlier this week our six-year-old granddaughter that she had counted up to 100 all by herself,” and I’m not sure who was more proud, she, her parents or I. In any case her pronouncement reminded me of the significance of numbers and, consequently, of time.
In my musings on her observation I realized that each day I have the opportunity to use 1,440 minutes. I’ve also got seven days this and every week. Each of these minutes, days and weeks add up to nearly 8,800 hours in a year. Somehow that seems considerably more significant than simply checking my watch every once in a while.
It was interesting, then, that our pastor’s sermon this morning dealt with the matter of the uncertainty of “tomorrow.” We can make all sorts of plans concerning our financial, social and family futures but the working out of those strategies is often beyond our control. On the lighter (or duller) side of things, we West Coast dwellers can probably expect rain and wind for the next 10 days based on meteorologists’ forecasts.
In all my ramblings, I’m going somewhere with this. We can’t control the weather, and even if we could, individual preferences and priorities would result in as mixed a bag as we already have. So it is in life. Good things happen, so do bad things but in all that, we still are responsible to choose our attitude.
Each day is an opportunity to truly live. Sobering but exciting stuff. My today, tomorrow and every day’s prayer is that I would fill those minutes, days and weeks with the things that really count.
“… Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.’” (James 4:13-17)
PS: Granddaughter would be proud of my ability to calculate such numbers.
