“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….
So teach us to number our days that we may get a hear to wisdom”
-Psalm 90:10,12
I recently came across a statistic from the U.S. Census Bureau: The median age of those living in the United States is 38.5 years. This is my exact age this month. I am younger than half of Americans, and older than the other half. As I inch closer to 40, I will solidify my membership in the older half of the population. This calls to mind the well-known verse from Psalm 90: “The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty…”. I’ve always heard this, but when you are a teenager it seems life a long way off. When you get to be about half-way there, it doesn’t seem so long any more. Many folks don’t even make it the 70 or 80 years. Life is a vapor. It comes and it goes.
Many folks have 70 or 80 years of misery – something next line in the Psalm alludes to: “yet their span is but toil and trouble”. The scriptures are brutally honest about life’s situations. Life can be tragic. Life can be short…or long. Life can be disappointing. Life can be hard. Life rarely goes the way we planned when we were younger. We turn around, and the years “are soon gone, and we fly away.”
Many know if far better than I do, but I already sense the shortness of this life. I am probably not going to get all the things I wanted out of life. Hopefully, I don’t. Because many of the things I want are pathways to self-destruction. Maybe accepting that I cannot get everything I want is the first step in receiving everything I need. Hopefully I can learn from the one who is before time how to “number my days, that I might get a heart of wisdom.”
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