21,703 Days

Sometimes the topic of my weekly blog post comes quite easily.  A little event during the week or an overheard phrase becomes an analogy to some spiritual lesson. There are other times that I sit down to write and have no idea what’s going to end up being posted online.  I must dig a little deeper for inspiration on those evenings and tonight was a time for digging.

Then I thought about our associate pastor’s message from this morning.  His title was “These are the Days of our Lives” – and no – he wasn’t referencing the soap opera.  His message was about the different lives we all lead – public, private, and secret and how we need to let God be the Lord of all those “lives”. 

My mind took a different direction on that title this evening as I thought about the days of my life. I found an online calculator that told me that as of today, I have lived 21,703 days on this earth. Then I thought about how little I actually remember about each individual day in my life.  Of course, I have vivid memories of my wedding and the births of my children.  I remember the day we discovered that our beautiful granddaughter was going to be joining our family.  There are scattered mental snapshots of moments on vacation, a few holidays, some painful events, and some profound moments in my relationship with God.  For the most part, life goes by in lots of ordinary, non-eventful days where I get up, go to work, and come home in a seemingly never-ending cycle.  As a teacher, I also have a line-up of boring, quiet summer days every year.

I’ve never been able to keep up the discipline of an everyday diary.  However, I do have a little journal, given to me by a good friend, where I have tried to record the major events in my life.  All told, there are probably less than a hundred days recorded in that slim volume but reading over those entries reminds me of some very precious moments and many lessons learned.  Much of what I am able to convey in writing now is because of how I have learned to hear God in the situations of my life like the ones recorded there.

Not all of it is joyful.  Some of the events were things that I thought would break me at the time but running through all of it is the faithfulness of God.  He has been in the middle of every circumstance of my life, using all things “for my good” even when it didn’t feel so good at the time.  

So much of our lives will be a blur as we move through our daily routines, but every moment is a gift.  I encourage you to start a little notebook of your own.  Don’t put yourself under the bondage of writing something every day but begin to record the blessings in your life.  Write about the funny things your child or grandchild does and says.  Record the statement in your pastor’s sermon that really touched your heart.  Pour out your own frustrations about a situation and then write down the outcome that comes after a time of prayer and trusting God.  If you aren’t much of a writer, at least jot down a word or a phrase or draw a picture that will remind you of the event. Write the date to help you place that moment in time. Think about how the events of the people of the Bible – both tragic and triumphant – serve to teach and inspire us today.  Somebody wrote it down.

Ten years of my life are in this little book I’ve been using, and I’ve just filled it. When I get discouraged, I sometimes just sit and read about the “roller-coaster” of the last few years and remember what God has done. There’s another book in my home office waiting to receive new memories, thoughts and answered prayers.  Let’s not let all those “days of our lives” slip through our minds like those “sands through the hourglass”.  Let’s allow the past to give us hope for the future.