About time…
Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Psalm 90:12
It's disappointing to feel like you've wasted time. On a job that wasn't fulfilling, a relationship that never went anywhere, a trip that was nothing but trouble. Yes, when we feel we've wasted our time, we lament for what could have been and what we could have been doing instead.
Noticing and mourning the passing of time isn't a folly or a sin in and of itself. In Psalm 90, Moses noted that being aware of the finite nature of our existence leads to a "heart of wisdom." But when we notice how time slips away, we tend to the extreme of wanting to plan every second of it. I know I do. From the time I wake, I have a general outline of how I should fill my day:
5:45 wake up and read Devotional
6:15 wake kids and feed breakfast; start a load of laundry
6:30 get dressed and lay out clothes for kids
6:45 brush teeth
7:15 leave for school drop off
8:00 grocery shop
8:45 put away groceries and move laundry
9:00 Bible study
10:00 writing time
… you get the idea. Yes, I am a planner. Always have been. Buying a pretty new planner at the beginning of school was always the highlight of my year. Here lately, though, my plans seem to be falling apart more than following through. And when this happens enough in the life of a Christian, you can't help but wonder if God is trying to teach you something very important.
Because I wasn't doing my own research on the subject, God has found ways to bring up themes of planning, time, and control in almost all of my devotionals and Bible studies the past few weeks. You'd think I would have taken the hint and stopped all of my planning for this summer and fall, but I just couldn't seem to help it. So the last few days, God has been reminding me over and over that my plans can change in an instant, and often there is nothing I can do about it.
In other words, my Father is teaching His child a lesson, and that lesson came into sharp focus today in my reading of James 4:13-15: "Now listen, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.' Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, 'If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that'" (NIV).
Talk about a wakeup call. I had noticed hints of this lesson in recent days, but I was keeping the culmination of the teaching distanced from my mind. I knew what God was teaching me, but I didn't want to learn it. I wanted so desperately for the coming weeks to follow the "perfect" plan I had been working on for months that I refused to acknowledge that maybe it wasn't so perfect after all.
It's honestly a bit laughable now when I think of how God has been patiently trying to reach me about this stubbornness for so long. As a mom of twin four-year-olds, my life is full of trying to teach obstinate toddlers important life lessons, most often needing to reteach the same lesson multiple times until it sticks. And the truth of the matter is that while I think the lesson is finally getting through to me, I'm certain God will have to remind me of it again in the future.
So for now, I'm choosing to sit and listen. Not to procreate my own plan, but to poise prostrate to His. Not to get all my ducks in a row, but acknowledge that there is a whole zoo of possibilities, and the Creator is the best organizer of chaos. I will recognize that my days are numbered but also "all the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be" (Psalm 139:16b, NIV). I will remember that worrying about anything won't "add a single hour to [my] life" (Luke 12:25, NIV). And as Erica Wiggenhorn writes, I should never forget that "seeking His purpose for our lives keeps time in proper perspective" (Am I Doing This Right? F5 James).
I hope this lesson can be beneficial to you today as well, saving you from the headache I have put myself through the past few months. Yes, let's be excited about the future and its possibilities. Yes, a certain amount of planning is required for life to run smoothly. But let's go to God first when making these plans, seeking His guidance, provision, and protection over them.
