On New Year’s day we turn on our hindsight. We think back and try to remember how we felt the New Year before.  We try to recall our state of mind.  Where were we the year before? How did we celebrate the New Year?

We assess what we have done; what we have yet to do; and we chide ourselves for not having accomplished what we had wanted to accomplish. I wonder if this is what it means to “ number our days.”

Yesterday, January 3, 2012 marks the 45^th wedding anniversary of my parents. I sent my Dad a text message to congratulate him on their 45^th anniversary and he sent me a text saying: “Siya nga pala! ! ! Thanks.”  Meaning: “Oh, right, thanks for reminding me.”

Was he being so stereotypically male?  Married males are supposed to forget their anniversaries, much to the consternation of their wives. Comedic punch lines tell us that males would rather forget their anniversaries just as much as females “forget” their true age.

In fairness to my Dad, I can totally understand how he would forget. He belongs to the generation of people who didn’t glory in marriage: they just got married and stayed married as some kind of biological imperative. Our generation is more self-absorbed: we philosophize about getting married; we hem and we haw before we finally take the plunge; and then as we swim against the current (as marriage inevitably requires us to) we keep thinking what it all means.

I say this from experience. My husband was my steady date for about 2 years before he became my boyfriend. He was my boyfriend for 3 years before we got engaged. We were engaged for about 6 years before we finally got married! All that time, no matter what topic we started with, we always ended up discussing what marriage ought to mean. We looked around at married couples we knew and analyzed what made them happy or unhappy and we thoroughly discussed why we might end up like them and why we hope we wouldn’t. All those years, we didn’t know it but we were setting up the blueprint for our marriage. We read books; we read the Bible and analyzed what definition the Bible had of marriage. Inevitably, we had to make decisions whether or not we would abide by the Biblical definition.

Just before we got married, we had the jitters and we talked about whether we were doing the right thing. We wondered whether this was truly God’s perfect will for us both. We talked our fears and insecurities out: we might get fed up with married life; we might get bored; we might grow out of love; one of us might just die young and leave the other heartbroken. But, against all reasonable arguments we both had, against both our families’ worries and misgivings, we got married.

After we got married, we got busy building the marriage; we busied ourselves living the married life that we forgot all our fears.  The horrors we imagined were nothing compared to the horrors of real life: sickness, disease, accident, injury, solitude, disappointment, grief, loss. The wear and tear of life kept us too busy to think of the marriage: we just stuck it out and stayed married. We worked, we laughed, we cried: we did everything together, married.

We only ever thought of being married whenever our anniversary came around.  Each year was a milestone, a time for taking stock, a time for counting blessings: every year, we were just relieved to have survived and braced ourselves for another year, trusting God to always be faithful as He has been thus far.

Just this December, someone took our family picture. Our kids are all grown up. Gasp! We are getting old (er!) Where did time go? We have been married for 16 years and those 16 years seem like a blur.  It went by too fast.

I’d like to think that time flies when you’re having fun.  You forget time when you are busy living. We forget to mark time. Time just becomes a way by which we take stock and remember.  Does this mean that we are not “numbering our days?” By being often unaware of the passage of time, are we failing to “number our days?”  What does “teach us to number our days” really mean?

Thankfully, the entire verse reads; “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. “ We are not instructed to count the days for the sake of counting the days. We are instructed to count our days with the perspective of eternity. We number the days to be wise.

Look at Psalm 90 verses 1 and 2: it begins with the thought of the eternality of God. I like best A.W. Tozer’s illustration: think of a sheet of white bond paper extending in all directions: that is God’s eternality. Put a dot anywhere on that sheet of white bond paper and that is the finiteness of man.

Verses 9 and 10 give us a reality check: our days are short; most of our days are spent making mistakes and sinning against God. Even if we live to the age of 70 or 80, still our lives are short compared with God’s eternal existence.

We must make wise use of our time: hence, the prayer for God to “teach us to number our days.” It not only means to make full use of time—not to waste it. It also means to choose to do things that count for eternity. To learn how to choose things that please God instead of pleasing ourselves. To use wisdom and discretion before we engage ourselves in tasks and involvements: we must spend our time and strength in things that are eternal.

Not all things that are urgent are important; and not all things that are important are significant. In Tagalog, hindi lahat ng APURAHAN ay MAHALAGA. Hindi lahat ng MAHALAGA ay MAKABULUHAN.

Happy New Year, everyone!