Teach Us to Number Our Days

Every so often, when I am driving from point A to point B, I take a side trip of some kind, “just because.” Sometimes, when going to work in the morning, I'll go South into the county, then back East on one of the county roads until I get to Old Highway 81...then go back into Wichita proper that way. Sometimes, when I have an errand to run before I get to work, that errand takes me to a part of town I haven't been to in awhile, so I sort of meander to work from wherever that errand had taken me.

Such was the case when I found myself driving past my old Alma Mater, Newman University. When I attended, it was Kansas Newman College. I slowed down and turned into the campus. Driving around the campus a couple of times (it's a relatively small place), I reminisced in my mind about some of the buildings I had been in, the new buildings that had been constructed since I had attended, and a few of the people I had classes with back in the mid-1990's. I saw some of my favorite parking places, and even thought about a kind of circular path I would take at times if I had some time and needed some exercise.

I took a degree-completion course there in business management, and did not participate in the extra-curricular things, or have much to do with college life. I had a full time job at the time, a family, and had to drive 50 miles one way just to attend classes (there was no on-line then). Each semester was a 9 credit hour semester, with three classes, each five weeks long. So it was indeed an accelerated curriculum. Not much time for ball games and the like.

I've done the same in other locations in Wichita and surrounding area. I lived here for a time in the late 1960's, attending WTI (Wichita Technical Institute) and still recall some of that experience. Some of the neighborhoods are still somewhat familiar, and some of the buildings still stand that I haunted back then.

I also like to, from time to time, just go for a drive in the country. Yes, there is country in and around Sedgwick County, although it's getting harder to find nowadays. I enjoy going when I can roll down the window, drive 40mph or less, look at the crops (really!), the farmsteads, and the livestock.

And I enjoy going back to Harper County, where I was born and raised, and raised my kids. Some things have changed; a lot has stayed the same. I'll take off in the rural area of that county too, thinking about families who used to live here or there, or who farmed what land. And, of course, look at the crops, the farmsteads, and the livestock.

I think the older I get, the more I enjoy such times. I don't know if that's a natural by-product of older age, or if it's something I just seem to enjoy. But those times seem to take me back to a younger time in life. And I usually manage to recall the more pleasant of those times and put aside some of the less pleasant aspects of those days.

The Bible talks of someone living about 70 years, or if by reason of strength 80 (Psalm 90:10). And in that verse, it also talks of those days being filled with trouble and sorrow. I know that chapter also talks of God's eternal nature and our sinful nature, and that the key point of the Psalm seems to be in verses 12, which says, “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” And verse 14, “Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.

No matter the days we have “consumed,” or the days we have left; no matter how often we reminisce and long for a simpler time; no matter how much we may spend some time in the past, we dare not lose sight of the fact that we are to be aware of our limited days and use them consumed in the love of God, singing and being glad in all the days He chooses to give us.