"Teach us to number our days and recognize how few they are, help us to spend them as we should." Psalm 90:12
This scripture makes a couple of things clear.
1. Life is short.
I don't know about you but often times I forget that life is short. I feel like I've got all the time in the world but the truth is that I don't. A scripture in James compares our life to a mist or a vapor that appears for a moment then vanishes away. Life goes by so very fast. It seems like just yesterday I was a teenager, turned around and was married, turned around again and I now we have a child. At this point I'm scared to blink because if I do I'm sure I'll find myself retired, living in Florida, wearing my pants too high showing off my black socks and white orthopedic tennis shoes while I drive around town as slowly as possible with my turn signal on.
The other thing this scripture makes clear is that...
2. There IS a way that we should spend our lives.
This is interesting because it also implies that there is a way that we should NOT spend our lives. Make no mistake about it, we are all spending our lives whether we like it or not. Both you and I will exchange the next 24 hours of our lives for something. I don't know about you but something in me wants to make sure that I've spent it well. I want to be able to stand at the end of my days knowing that my life was more than just a list of good intentions, but that I lived a life that was intentional. That I "spent it as I should" ... not just in my own eyes, but in the eyes of the one who matters most... God's.
Because (1.) life is short and (2.) there is a way that we should spend it, I've challenged our church to ask themselves this one clarifying question. "What would you do if you had just 30 days to live?" I love the sense of urgency that this concept creates. It causes us to clear away the clutter our overcrowded lives and reduce things down to whats really important. It also forces us to do today what we would have put off until tomorrow.
When you realize that your days are counting down it makes you want to make your days count.
So, this is what we've challenged those in our church to do : live the next 30 days as if they were their last. Not because they will die in a month but because life is short and it's just seems silly to wait until you know you have 30 days to left to do the things that are most important. For some people that will mean making a long overdue phone call. Others will need to write a letter of gratitude to someone that made a difference in their life. Others will have to give forgiveness to or ask forgiveness from someone. Some will need to make some sort of spiritual decision. For some it will mean a change in lifestyle altogether. Whatever it is, my hope is that some of you will share what happens here in the comments section of this blog as we do this experiment together. I truly believe that at the end of these 30 days we all will be a little more focused, a little more intentional, and a little more alive than we ever were before.
