Teach Us To Number Our Days

This year, we're collaborating with writers across the Augustine Collective, a network of student-led Christian journals, to bring you a series of short devotional articles during this season of Lent, the 40-day period prior to Easter. Find this series also published by UChicago's CANA Journal and UC Berkeley's TAUG.

By isaac liu, uc berkeley

Most people are familiar with the idea that our days are numbered. We know in the back of our minds that none of us will live on Earth forever, and everyone will eventually pass on to “a better place;” such is the circle of life. Many would be happy to leave it at that and move on with their day. 

But Moses, devoted servant and friend of God, was deeply aware of man’s mortal condition; and under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he penned a prayer meditating on this truth which later became the 90th Psalm. Verse 12 of the Psalm says this:

So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.

Moses acknowledges from the outset that our days are countable. Though we do not know the exact number of days we’ll be alive, there is a number to them! This may seem obvious, but it is meant to show us just how different we are from God, who is “from everlasting to everlasting” [1]. While we are finite creatures with limited lifespans, it is impossible to number God’s days—they are infinite.

Not only does God not have a beginning or end, but He is the one who determines our beginning and end. It is He who knits us together in our mother’s womb, and He who returns us to dust when our days are spent [2]. Truly, as King David declared, our time is in God’s hands [3].

Perhaps the shortness of our lives wouldn’t be so bad if they were fun or fulfilling—hence the saying “here for a good time, not a long time.” But is this the case? Moses seems to think otherwise. 

Though the average human is able to live to seventy or eighty years (which already pales in comparison to God’s eternality), this number isn’t a guarantee; disaster may strike at any moment, ending our lives prematurely. But Moses notes that even for those who make it that far, the years they do have are filled with “toil and trouble” [4]—backbreaking, seemingly fruitless labor, and tragedies that pile sorrow upon sorrow. 

This curse describes the immediate predicament of the Israelites in the wilderness, but elsewhere the Bible points out that the same meaninglessness is experienced almost universally. According to the Preacher of Ecclesiastes, “all [man’s] days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation”; “there [is] nothing to be gained under the sun” [5]. 

It is even more sobering that such hardships are no less than God’s righteous judgment upon us. Moses woefully recognizes that God sees all the ways that we’ve failed to love Him with all our being and to love our neighbors as ourselves, and as a result we deserve His wrath [6]. Not only are we small and insignificant compared to God, but in our natural state we are unclean and defiled before His holy presence. 

Though these are significant, life-altering truths, most of us tend to avoid dwelling on them. 

We avoid dwelling on our mortal problem—the fact that we’re all headed for the grave one way or another—as well as our moral problem. It can be easy for us to treat ourselves as relatively good people—imperfect, sure, but better than average. We often minimize the severity of our sin, if it crosses our minds at all. So we need God to teach us the practice of numbering our days, in order that these truths may be impressed on our hearts; only He has the power to change us at our very core.

Meditating on our mortal and moral problems protects us from deceiving ourselves and helps us to see God and ourselves as we truly are—not the distorted versions of us that the world, the flesh, and the devil would have us believe. God is not merely a moral being living in the clouds, but our eternal Creator, Sustainer, and Judge. We are not invincible, or charmingly imperfect, but fleeting and fatally rebellious. This reality is crushing—but recognizing it is imperative if we are to live our lives in a wise, appropriate response. 

And what is that response? In the following verses, Moses gives us an idea:

“Return, O Lord!” for God alone can rescue us out of our self-afflicted state.

“Satisfy us, O Lord!” for God alone can give us the fulfillment that we seek from our idols.

“Establish our work, O Lord!” for God alone can imbue our toil with meaning.

We bring these requests to the everlasting God of our salvation, knowing that as He is both infinitely great and infinitely good, all power and pleasure are His to fulfill them. 

Isaac Liu is a third-year at UC Berkeley studying English and Music.

SOURCES

[1] Psalm 90:1

[2] Psalm 139:13, 90:3

[3] Psalm 31:15

[4] Psalm 90:10

[5] Ecclesiastes 2:23, 11

[6] Psalm 90:7–8