Our Days are Numbered

Our days are numbered before we are born. And just as one hair of our head doesn't fall to the ground unnoticed by our God, neither does one day pass without His sustaining us. But eventually, for each of us there is that day, when God calls us Home. For the one going Home, it is as if life has just begun. Paradoxically, for us that remain, it is as if our life has just ended. Our hearts are torn apart by our enemy death. Life as we have known it has suddenly taken a new, unwelcomed direction.

Death is hard to understand. When faced with death, our souls scream out that it is not right. We are made for living, not for dying. Recently a friend with four children died of cancer at the age of 37 years. My mind races with all kinds of questions: who will take care of the children when they are sick, who will listen to the stories of their day, who will cook their dinner? But God deemed it good for her to go Home. Her days were numbered.

Within a couple of days of her death, I learn of another's friend whose granddaughter is killed in an auto accident; she is 16. Surely, there are many more things for her to learn, ways to serve God, life to be experienced. But God deemed it good for her to go Home. Her days, too, were numbered - just as they are for each of us.

I have to fight the notion within myself that these women's lives were cut short. It looks to me as if they had so much living ahead of them. But this is not God's perspective. Just as one hair doesn't fall to the ground unnoticed by Him, neither does one saint die without His knowing. Even in death, God is about His good purposes; He is accomplishing His plans. Through the pain of death, we can also rejoice – for one of those purposes is to abolish death!

Time

Time is one of those ever-elusive realities of life. My constant question is "where did it go?" It is rare that I do not wish I had more time to devote to whatever I am doing - be it talking to one of my girls, writing a letter, reading, studying.

Have you ever noticed how many clocks are in our homes? Almost every appliance and electric gadget comes with a clock to set. I deliberately do not set these digital reminders. It is a small act of defiance to say that I will not be ruled by the clock; but other people come behind me and set them anyway. It is hard to look any direction within my home and not see the time.

In my effort to be free from the tyranny of time, I try not to look at my clocks constantly. I try to free myself from the mindset that today I must accomplish a little more than I did yesterday. But I am not very successful. Furthermore, the clock is always calling out to me: time to pick up children from school, time for a meeting, time to begin dinner, time for bed.

This is a puzzling issue of discipleship. God honors work, but He also honors rest. When God created time, He declared that a 24-hour day was good. (What was He thinking?!) Jesus does not appear rushed or harried in the Gospels. He seems content with the time that God has given Him. So where is my misunderstanding of time? Am I a prisoner to a society that honors busyness above all else? Do I have too many responsibilities? Am I involved in the wrong activities?

My problem is not with time management – I know how to do that. My problem is more basic. I need to agree with God in His perspective and purposes of time. I need to be content and faithful with what God has given and declared good.

May God grant me contentment and understanding in using my days for His glory.

An Ordinary Man

In my study of James, I have often thought about its author. As I mentioned before, James did not always think that Jesus was the Messiah. John 7:5 says, "For not even His brothers were believing in Him." In fact, at one point Jesus' family goes to take custody of Him for they feared He had lost His senses (Mark 3:20-21). Yet after Jesus has ascended into Heaven, there James is with the apostles devoting himself to prayer.

How did James move from being a skeptic, to a believer, devoted to prayer (Acts 1:14), to a leader in the church (Acts 12:17, 15:13), and then to a pillar of the church (Galatians 2:9)? What made the difference? I believe it was an encounter with the Living Christ. "He (Jesus) appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve...then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles."

An encounter with the Living Christ has the power to change everything - and it did.

In Acts 4:13 the Peter and John were brought before Annas and Caiaphas by the Sadducees. After listening to Peter talk, Acts records, "they observed the confidence of Peter and John, and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were marveling, and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus."

These early church leaders were not extraordinary giants of the faith. In fact, many of them were uneducated and untrained - like me. I do not hold a degree from a prestigious university; I am not a CEOs of a Fortune 500 company. I wash dishes and cook dinner and spend many hours listening and talking with my children. In reality, I am sort of a 21st century female equivalent of a Galilean fisherman - a very ordinary person carrying out very ordinary responsibilities.

But these men, these uneducated and untrained men, had been with Jesus.

And the gospel still has the lifechanging power to transform lives today. I am an ordinary woman; I have ordinary responsibilities. But I pray that as others see and observe my life, they will say of me, "this woman has been with Jesus."