Living on the Edge of Eternity

I remember hearing someone tell the story about a man who calculated the number of days he had left, assuming he were to live to be eighty years old. He then put that number on his desk, and ticked off each day as a reminder of how short his time was.But is that what it really means to number our days? Should we get out our calculators and figure out how many days we’ve got left? Should we become time-obsessed people?

For many years, this is exactly what I thought we should do. But a few years ago, a tragedy in our small town changed my mind. A sixteen-year-old girl was out jogging one afternoon, and dropped dead on the side of the road. She was young, in apparently good health, and had her entire life to look forward to. If she were to have taken a calculator and figured out the number of days she had left, it would have been in the tens of thousands. But she never saw her seventeenth birthday.

Her sudden death served as a stark wake-up call to me, a reminder that numbering our days isn’t about counting how many days or months or years we have left. Numbering our days means realizing that we don’t have a guarantee on our next breath. It means that we order and conduct our lives knowing that every day—every moment—we live could be our last.

How would it change your life if you knew that you would be dead before the day ended? What would you do differently? How would you treat your wife, your husband, your children? What would be your attitude toward your relationship to God?

AUTHOR QUOTE: We live every day on the razor-edge of eternity.

“So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom,” Psalm 90:12 KJV.

Today’s devotion is by James H. Pence. James is an author, editor, singer, and performance chalk artist who uses his gifts to tell the stories of your heart. Visit his Web site at: www.jamespence.com.