Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
You turn men back to dust, saying, “Return to dust, O sons of men.” For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night. You sweep men away in the sleep of death; they are like the new grass of the morning-though in the morning it springs up new, by evening it is dry and withered. …
All our days pass away under your wrath; we finish our years with a moan. The length of our days is seventy years-or eighty, if we have the strength; yet their span is but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away. … Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Character Check Do I have the right kind of busyness in my life?
In Business Terms A portion of Scripture that guides me constantly is 2 Peter 3:8, where Peter says, “To the Lord, a thousand years are as a day, and a day is as a thousand years.”
I believe that every moment is an opportunity to be seized. Each day is as a thousand years; our twenty-four-hour slice of time is a sunrise-to-sunset opportunity for us to do something, by the grace of God, that counts for eternity, multiplying out to more than a thousand years.
I’m not saying that every moment, every day here equals a thousand years there. The proportions are what I think Peter was trying to get across: that this is how sacred, how valuable, how sanctified our moments really are.
A French mystic of the seventeenth century said that God does not give us time in which to do nothing. There is no such thing as empty time. Now, certainly there must be times of rest and respite, in which you go before the Lord in solitude. But even our meditation has a beautiful purpose-not utilitarian, in that it is something to be used-a sweet repose in which those moments of rest benefit the soul and end up glorifying God.
It makes our suffering purposeful. It doesn’t mean you’re any less busy-it may mean you’re more busy But the load is lightened knowing that this translates out to eternity-in your life, in another’s life, and for the glory of God.
—Joni Eareckson Tada
Something to Think About I have this minute in my control. It is all I really do have to work with. It is as magnificent or drab or vile as the thoughts which fill it. I fear our most common sin is empty minutes. – Frank Laubach
