Psalm 90:12
So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. (ESV)

I have a special interest in the over-60 crowd – probably because I am well-ensconced in that cohort. But let me tell you why lest you start thinking I’m interested in recreational opportunities or healthcare for the elderly. I am not. At least not to the point of it holding my interest for long. I care especially about my aged peers because we have all lived longer than we are going to live, and it is of ultimate importance that we have done with the minor irritations and pleasures of life and focus on the eternal.

The Psalmist prayed, “Lord, teach us to number our days.” Our numbering begins when we mark its O so swift passage and our momentary hold upon it. The older I get the more I think of how briefly I’ve lived. I look at pictures of my sons when they were children and of their children when they were small and it seems like only yesterday when I was sharing those days with them. The “me” that I see in my mind’s eye has changed but little since those days; the “me” I see in the mirror reminds me that while I was a soldier once and young, those days have slipped into the dim recesses of history.

The mirror tells me how blessed of God I have been to have lived to white hair and wrinkles, but it also tells me that this amazing life is drawing to its inevitable close. That afore-mentioned Psalmist also reminds us that our lives are like the grass that greens in the morning dew and withers and fades in the heat of the day. We are so short-lived! Just as we begin to delight in a wisdom honed with experience, we fade away into forgetfulness. I am so tempted to sing that song from the 60s, “Is That All There Is?” “Lord God,” I cry, “Is this it? To live, flourish briefly, and then wither and fade?”

If this is all there is, if we live long should we be so lucky, if life is lived, ended, and over, then why should we not despair!? But wait! He asked to be taught to number his days. Now this little bit of advice goes for everyone from the teen to the toothless because no one knows how many days are allotted to him.Is one to live to only see twenty or might he see five times twenty? I do not know; only God knows. But the longer we live the shorter the span until our death.

There I said it: death, Death, DEATH! That dreaded word we don’t even speak when referring to one who has died. They “passed away.” They “crossed the rainbow bridge.” They “expired.” Expired like a jug of milk no less. But no, I’d rather use that out of style word, that word we don’t even hear in funerals: death. It is appointed unto all men once to die. But death is the end for no man. Death is the doorway into either heaven or hell.

It is appointed . . . and after that the judgment. Each and every one of us is bound for the divine assize. (Isn’t that a cool word? Assize – it’s just a fancy word for the county court system used in the UK until the 1970s and now to be used for the court that sets in heaven.) And this is of overwhelming importance, there is only one bench before which all of humanity will stand: the judgment seat of God. There we have but one advocate: the Holy Spirit. And only issue upon which judgment is passed is this: what have you done with the Son?

There’s no avoiding it: we are all sinners, and sinners are destined to die the death from which one never lives again . I know no one who can claim he is so good he doesn’t need Jesus. That is, no one can stand before the Righteous Judge and claim he is so good he doesn’t need Jesus. We can claim we are good enough for heaven while we’re still burning oxygen, but that claim goes with us into the grave.

If we need Jesus, how do we get him? Great question – in fact it is THE question. But we don’t “get Jesus” like we would get a car or an ice cream. We have nothing in our accounts – in fact we all are running a deficit – with which to “get” him. That’s bad news! But here’s the good stuff. Jesus will give us his very life – both inside and outside – in exchange for our broken one. What do I mean by this? I’m talking miracles!

Through Jesus Christ, through his perfect life, his atoning death, his resurrection and ascension into heaven, through everything this he was and is, we are born into his family (we move out of our earthly tribes and into his heavenly one), we are given new desires and impulses, and most importantly, we are forgiven and treated by the God who knows us far better than we know ourselves as if we had never sinned in our entire lives. And because of this divine transaction in which God exchanges our broken lives for Christ’s perfect one, we are given the promise of the resurrection of the dead and eternal life with him when Christ returns.

And this brings me back to those of us in the over-60 crowd. 95% of everyone who has died of Covid in this country were over 60. In any given year 80% of the 3 million people who die in the US every year (typically .9% of the population) or 2.4 million of those who died are over 65. Why do I share such “good” news? Because we are in the it’s-about-time-to-die cohort! We don’t have time to waste! We don’t have much time at all. So, as the scripture says, today, if you hear his voice, do no harden your heart. Heaven’s door is ajar. We may have wasted a lifetime on foolish pursuits. We may have amassed wealth that will go to the taxman and wastrel relatives. Our boats, cars, houses, and lands will soon go to auction. We take nothing from this life but the record of life lived. Whose record do we want the judge who knows all to read: Christ’s or ours. Me? I choose Christ’s.