On Spending Our Days
In the year just gone the world has been writing history, not with ink only but with blood and tears; not in the quiet of the study but in violence, terror and death in city streets and along the borders of nations; and other and milder but more significant history has been written by incredible feats of power in sending man-made objects out to circle the moon and the sun.
But what is more important is that each of us has also been writing history. That the church has made history is not so significant as that you have and I have. What is done by a group is possible only because individuals have been at work. A company cannot work as a company nor will it be judged as such. Paul by inspiration singled out the individual and stood him up alone to receive judgment: His work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved . . . (1 Corinthians 3:13-15). And again, For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad (2 Corinthians 5:10). At that day there will be no hiding in the crowd. Each one will come carrying his own book of history under his arm. So we should close reverently the book of the year just gone; we shall see it again.
If This Were Your Last Day It is important that we remember that all our days come to us out of the sheer mercy of God, unearned, undeserved and, I fear, mostly unappreciated. By sin our lives stand under forfeit; God owes us nothing. The bell that tolls the death of the passing year might as justly toll for us. Only by God’s infinite goodness are we yet alive to see each other’s face. Each year is a gift of grace and each day an unearned bonus.
I think it is typical of us that we take our days for granted. We say at the start of each year, “This may be the last,” and resolve to amend our lives; but before many days have passed we forget our resolutions and grow bold and arrogant again, deceived by the apparent prodigality with which our days are given to us, heaped up, shaken together and running over. But all things have an end. The pitcher goes once too often to the well; the old tree braves one too many storms and comes down with a great crash upon the hill; the strongest heart weakens at last and sputters to a stop.
Welcoming Another Day Yet I do not advise that we end the year on a somber note. The march, not the dirge, has ever been the music of Christianity. If we are good students in the school of life, there is much that the years have to teach us. But the Christian is more than a student, more than a philosopher. He is a believer, and the object of his faith makes the difference, the mighty difference.
Of all persons the Christian should be best prepared for whatever the New Year brings. He has dealt with life at its source. In Christ he has disposed of a thousand enemies that other men must face alone and unprepared. He can face his tomorrow cheerful and unafraid because yesterday he turned his feet into the ways of peace and today he lives in God. The man who has made God his dwelling place will always have a safe habitation.
Charles Wesley, God's enraptured troubadour, wrote and sang a hymn for almost every occasion. On the morning of his birthday he composed a song of praise to God. Let us borrow it and adapt two of its stanzas to the birth of the New Year.
To each one fortunate enough to live out 1959, God will have given 365 days broken into 8,760 hours. Of these hours, 2,920 will have been spent in sleep, and about the same number at work. An equal number has been given us to spend in reverent preparation for the moment when days and years shall cease and time shall be no more. What prayer could be more spiritually appropriate than that of Moses, the man of God: “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12).
It may have been at the shut of the year that Moses made his plaintive prayer for wisdom to know what to do with his days; and it was in his old age that Jacob stood before Pharaoh and confessed, “The years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty. My years have been few and difficult and they do not equal the years of the pilgrimage of my fathers” (Genesis 47:9). These were wise men, disciplined, seasoned, familiar with the ways of men and experienced in the ways of God. They valued the days and the years. It is well that we learn to do the same.
All honor and praise To the Father of grace,
To the Spirit and Son I return;
The business pursue He hath made me to do,
And rejoice that I ever was born.
My remnant of days I spend in His praise,
Who died the whole world to redeem:
Be they many or few, my days are His due,
And they all are devoted to Him.