The Waiting Game: Learning to number my days

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. In a lifetime of living within an hour of this small resort town, I hadn’t seen anything like it.  A rare flood engulfing the main street receded, leaving the street filled with river rock-not small river rock, but large rocks requiring heavy equipment to remove them.  We thought we were past it, disasters like the one last year that made camping, hiking, and tourist activities difficult.  Last summer’s dry conditions left my home state-and this particular town- engulfed in flames and smoke for the majority of the summer and fall.  This year, however, we had snow and then rain, and lots of it. Phew! We weren’t going to burn up like that again!  We had just been there hiking the day before the flood, trying to beat the storm, and now the campgrounds and some hiking trails are closed all summer due to damaged campgrounds, trails, roads, bridges and more.  The mountain pass that brings so much tourism to that small community is still not open due to the massive snow fall, and here we are again, waiting to get back to normal for another year.

Of course, the residents of this small town want to get back to normal, their livelihoods depend on it, but I can’t help but be reminded of my own discontentment when I think of this situation.  Just as our community was sure that everything would be better when the fires ended, I am always waiting for something to change: then, I can really get started. 

When I get married.

When I get a better job.

When I have a child.

When my kids start school.

When my kids are older.

When summer starts.

When I finish this project.

When I get my master’s degree.

When we reach financial stability.

When I can retire.

When the world is less crazy.

And pretty soon, I have “when”ed my life away. 

It’s funny how most of these things have happened, but I am still waiting: waiting to be more consistent in my quiet time and prayer life, more involved in mentoring and volunteering, more concerned with what God really wants me to be doing with my life. Mostly just waiting.

I should know better. As Psalm 90 says, “The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength of eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.  Who considers the power of your anger, and your wrath according to the fear of you? So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. . . Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.  Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, and for as many years as we have seen evil. . . Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands!” (Psalm 90: 10-17).

Just like four years of high school seem like a lifetime to my students, while I am in the midst of a period of waiting for any of the above scenarios, it seems forever.  Time is different for God.  2 Peter 3 says, “. . . with the Lord one days is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day”.  As Psalm 90 states, our lives are short.  Instead of waiting for, well, anything, I should consider the twelve step concept of “one day at a time”.  Since my days are “numbered”, I need to get up each day asking God what he has for that day, not when the next season of my life “finally” comes. 

Paul even warns us not to put too much stock in our own plans, even if they are good plans.  He says, “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’-yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring.  What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that’” (James 4:13-15). 

Lord, please make me “glad for as many days” as you give me.  Help me to seek you daily instead of making big plans for when things finally change.  Give me your wisdom one day at a time to say the prayer of faith, to do the task at hand, to invest the relationship that is right in front of me before the opportunity is gone.