So Short a Summer

 

"Next week school starts again!"  I told our children.  Four of them were going to be resuming their studies at our little school.

"I'm not ready," One of them complained, wrinkling his face up into a discouraged look.

"It has been two and a half months since school let out," I said.  (I'm very good at calculating times and seasons.  I even generally know what day of the week it is).  "That's how long summer vacation usually lasts."

"It doesn't seem like it," my son said.

It is at a young age that we learn the transitory nature of time.  You wait and wait, what seems an eternity for your next birthday, only to have it vanish in a few seconds.  A long-awaited trip disappears, almost before it starts.

Humans have a strange relationship with time.  We are given only a limited amount of it and yet, we tend to squander this precious commodity on frivolous things.

Psalm 90:10-12 speaks to us of the brief nature of our lives and of the importance of using them for things that have value.

Every hour, every minute has value.  We can choose to spend it scrolling through social media or speaking encouragement to someone who is hurting.  Even if we do not consciously spend the time, it will still vanish, used to purchase whatever things, trivial or not, that fill our days.

The sad thing is that so few of us learn to number our days.  Instead, we get to the end of whole seasons of our lives wondering where they went and what we did with them.

We are like a child reaching the end of his summer vacation and wondering where it went.

Psalms 90:10-12 "The days of our years are three score and ten; and if by reason of strength they be four score years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow for it is soon cut off and we fly away.  Who knoweth the power of thy anger?  even according to thy fear so is thy wrath.  So, teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom."