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Number Your Days

   7,305 days.  That's approximately how many days I have left, if I live to the age my parents did. Of course, that is a big if. No one is guaranteed tomorrow. 
  Writing my mother's obituary, it seemed peculiar that almost 80 years could be summed up so easily.  I'm sure mine will be no different. The Bible says our life is but a vapor,here today and gone tomorrow. 
   I am 60.  I remember 40 like it was yesterday.  So, I know how quickly it is going to fly by.  I work for my neighbor and she pays me by the month.  It seems like she is always writing me a check.  The older I get, the quicker it goes.
   But, boil it down to days, like the Bible recommends, and it really seems short. What to do?  1) Recognize the brevity. 2)Number your days, based on national averages or the lifespan of your parents, if they have passed on. 3)Apply your heart to wisdom.  When I taught my oldest, kindergarten (homeschool), there was a little ditty, wwwwwisdom is God's wwwwwway. How can we know God's way?  Read the Bible. Pray.  Attend church. Those are three good starting points.
    We like to push the thought of death aside because it is an unpleasant thought.  Here, in America, we often have very little exposure to death.  Even at my age, I have never seen anyone take their last breath. The Bible instructs us to face it, rather than run away.  This is what the NLT says in the book of Ecclesiastes:Better to spend your time at funerals than at parties. After all, everyone dies--so the living should take this to heart. 
    Wow!  This is so unlike us. Please don't remind me of my mortality, is our mantra. Perhaps it is why we are so obsessed with youth and our looks. Perhaps, we are trying to kid ourselves, and everyone else, that somehow we can escape death. Not hardly.  
    Death is what we all face.  There is no getting out of this alive, as they say. If you are wise, you won't pretend, you won't deny, and you'll trust God.  Cause in the end, if we don't have him, then the final foe, death, will conquer us, instead of vice versa.
    
   

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