days

Opening Prayer: Satisfy us in the morning, O God, with your unfailing love, that we might sing for joy and be glad all our days.  Amen.

Scripture: Psalm 90:12-17

Journal: Who or what determines how you number, or arrange, your days?  What would it look like to allow God to determine that?

Reflection: Annie Dillard once wrote: "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.  What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing."  I think she must have understood the concept of numbering our days aright.  She realized how easy it could be to get lulled to sleep in our lives and lose touch with the fact that we have the responsibility to use our minutes and our hours and our days to live the life we have been given to live, rather than simply allowing life to live us.  We are not merely passive observers, but are active participants.  There is a certain stewardship to this life we have been given; to use it as the One who gave it to us intended.  Our lives are not our own.  They do not belong to us, but to Him.  Thus, we do not establish the work of our hands for ourselves; we ask God, as Moses instructed, to establish the work of our hands for us. (Psalm 90:17)  That takes a lot of time and effort, a lot of being still and making space, a lot of listening and paying attention.  If we are to have any real hope of knowing exactly what the work is that we have been given to do, we must first receive that direction from God, rather than just charging ahead, into our lives, determining for ourselves what our work and our direction will be.  When I finally begin to understand this I can actually hold some hope of someday becoming wise enough to know what it means to number my days aright.

Prayer

Closing Prayer: Oh! Teach us to live well! Teach us to live wisely and well! Come back, God—how long do we have to wait?—and treat your servants with kindness for a change. Surprise us with love at daybreak; then we’ll skip and dance all the day long. Make up for the bad times with some good times; we’ve seen enough evil to last a lifetime. Let your servants see what you’re best at—the ways you rule and bless your children. And let the loveliness of our Lord, our God, rest on us, confirming the work that we do. Oh, yes. Affirm the work that we do! (The Message)