Not My Day

This entry is based on my response to something I read in the book we read during our last two weeks there, Crazy Love by Francis Chan:

It's easy to think about today as just another day. ... On the average day, we live caught up in ourselves. On the average day, we don't consider God very much. On the average day, we forget our life truly is a vapor. ...It's crazy to think today is just a normal day to do whatever we want with.

Most of the time I just view each day as another day – more time to continue my life and continue my routine, or, if it’s a day off, time to do whatever I want with. Because of this, I am rarely very intentional with how I spend my time, especially in an eternal context, because I feel like I have so much time, and of course, there’s always tomorrow. I constantly forget how limited my time is. I’m here alive on this Earth for a limited amount of time, though it may seem long right now, and none of it should be squandered. Most of the time I just flow with the day, doing what seems OK at the time, whatever I feel like should happen next or what I have previously planned to do. But days are precious, as is every hour. Yet I just spent an hour watching TV or surfing the internet that will never come back, and it could have been spent doing something of importance, something that would bring glory to God and have eternal significance. How much time have I lost in that manner? It’s just so easy to continue doing whatever I feel like without even stopping to think about what might be best to do, or what I could do to make the most of my time here rather than watch it move on by.

I’ve finally realized that David was really onto something when he said, “Teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts to wisdom” (Psalm 90:12).

I need to be reminded of this often, before I while a good bit of my time away without doing anything at all meaningful with it, or maybe just less meaningful than it could be. This doesn’t mean I have to be “productive” all the time – we must have times of rest, and our idea of “productive” is all wrong anyway. However, there are many things that are neither productive nor meaningful in any way that I end up doing without considering this. I need to be intentional.

I also get caught up on a regular day in a routine which often, by habit, excludes God from my thoughts or actions except for small things like a prayer at lunch or something like that. Maybe if I remembered how precious my days were, that I’m not just trying to pass time to arrive safely at the weekend or, ultimately, at the end of my life, I wouldn’t stay so focused on a routine and I would include God in everything. Think about that: is the purpose of my life really just to arrive safely at the end with a good reputation and a lot of stuff? That sounds incredibly boring to me – I don’t know about you. Well then, why do I like it’s true?

On a similar note, we have also tried very hard to distance ourselves as much as possible from death. While death used to be much a part of life, we in our culture are very rarely exposed to it at all in real life. Perhaps this is part of the problem, part of the reason we constantly feel like we have unlimited time. I remember reading something by Brennan Manning at one point, the gist of which went something like this: when we cease to think about death and about eternity, keeping these things in our minds, we lose a lot in life. I think he’s right. A related idea is expressed by Chesterton in Orthodoxy as he analyzes the idea of courage, saying that courage is a strong desire to live, taking the form of a readiness to die. In fact, many of the most amazing things are done when people are most faced with death. This is even backed up by Christ when he says, “take up your cross and follow me.” In that time, if you were carrying a cross, you were condemned to die, with nothing left to lose. And when we have nothing left to lose, we can do amazing and dangerous things. Yet when we forget about death and what comes after – for us, eternity with our Father – life remains ordinary and we rarely do anything extraordinary.

With this distance I have from death, I don’t think much about the possibility of it at all. I mean, it would be a little weird and morbid for me to consider it all the time, but the problem is that I really do think and live like I’m basically invincible, and certainly not going to die in the next 40 years. I mean, I avoid danger, but I live pretty much assured in my mind that I won’t die or get hurt badly or something like that until I’m old and gray.

How silly. We have no such guarantee, and thinking this way certainly doesn’t prompt me to any urgent action. This perceived security is an illusion. David got it right again when he said somewhere, “How like a puff of wind we are!” Lord, help us to remember that.

I missed this in my journal, but realized it as I wrote. We need to keep in mind always that it will never work for me to just try and remember something like this all the time so that it will change me. David realized this as well. He doesn’t say, “I’m going to number my days, and in this way apply my heart to wisdom.” No, he asks God to teach us. As usual, our strength will fail rapidly. We must look to God, asking and allowing Him to change our hearts so that our lives will change. Yet again, it’s about Him, not me.