Numbering the days

"So teach us to number our days." — Psalm 90:12

So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

I have been sitting with this verse the way you sit with a visitor who has come to stay and will not be hurried. It arrived in me this week, which is the anniversary week, which is a week for numbering things whether you intend to or not.

Fifty-two years of marriage. Seven years of widowhood. Seventy-seven years of being alive, which is a number I do not always believe. I do not number these things because counting is useful. I number them because counting is what the psalm asks, and the psalm is old enough and honest enough that I trust it, and the trust is the beginning of the wisdom the verse is talking about.

To number your days is not to be anxious about how many you have left. It is to be present in the one you are in. This morning I am in a Friday in June and the light is coming through the kitchen window and the coffee is in the mug with the chip on the handle and the Bible is open to Psalm 90 and I am here. I am in this day. I am numbering it by being in it.

The psalm was written by someone who knew that time does not wait and that the heart needs teaching. The heart wants to skip ahead or look behind. The heart wants to be anywhere except Friday morning in June with the dishes in the sink and the laundry to fold. The psalm says no. The psalm says this is the day. Number it. Apply your heart. The wisdom is in the paying attention.

I am paying attention. The light is moving on the table. The coffee is getting cold. The day is not going to come again.

Ruby keeps a collection of prayers at her kitchen table. You can find them here.