Counting our days
Ecc 1:2; 2:21-23; Ps 90:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14 and 17; Lk 12:13-21
If you’re like me, there has been a moment within the past few days when you’ve thought: “August, already? Really?!” Why did our childhood summers seem so long and our adult summers seem so short?
For you math nerds, there are fascinating studies that suggest this phenomenon occurs because the human body experiences time according to a logarithmic counting scale. Perhaps a more prosaic explanation is that young children lack the numerous deadlines and overlapping schedules that often govern adult life.
Pull out your calendar and look ahead: What events are coming up for you? How far out into the future is your life already scheduled? What is the year of your most distant appointment? 2026? 2027? Later?
When we live with one eye constantly scanning the future horizon on the lookout for impending responsibilities, it is small wonder that we tend to be less focused on the present. Many of us labor under the illusion that we can harness time, somehow tame it with our iCalendars. But time is inexorable — all that really changes is our perception of it.
The readings this week explore that theme from different perspectives. When Qoheleth laments that all his work and skills seem pointless (“vanity”), he grieves that he has no control over how time will treat the fruit of his labors. Why bother with good work? You can’t take it with you after death and it might all be left to a shiftless lout who has no respect or care for your hard-won gains. In the face of the surge of time, he is powerless and his legacy is likely to vanish like smoke.
The rich landowner in Jesus’ parable perceives time very differently. Far from feeling helpless in the face of time, he deludes himself into thinking he has complete control over it. He plans for tomorrow with the full expectation that tomorrow will obey his will. But tomorrow has very different plans in store for him — something we all can relate to.
Is there a way around these pitfalls of either seeing time as a merciless overlord or as a servant to do our bidding? I think we find such a way in our extraordinary responsorial psalm.
The psalmist begins, much like Qoheleth, noting that life is quite ephemeral. Like plants that spring up in the morning, bloom at noon and whither at dusk, our lives pass quickly and then God “turns us back to dust” (Ps 90:3). We might expect to be lead down a rather dreary path as the poem progresses.
But then something remarkable happens. The psalmist, as if acknowledging that the meaning of life in the face of such reality is an unfathomable mystery to us, directly asks God for a wise heart (Ps 90:12). And he does not ask for general wisdom: He specifically asks God to teach him how to “number his days aright” (Ps 90:12).
The very question implies that there is a right way and a wrong way to number one’s days. Clearly, we must not be counting our days correctly and only God can teach us a better way.
Qoheleth shows us that counting days as a dreary succession of one, two, three … until the inevitable last day on this earth is hardly a source of either peace or hope. In the face of suffering, disappointment or failure we can easily start measuring time this way. Jesus’ parable shows us that counting days as if they were an investment to be measured and manipulated according to our personal schemes is also not correct.
Only God truly sees how to measure time “aright.” He sees our enduring unlimited, value and dignity regardless of the temporal nature of our successes (contra Qoheleth). And he values time spent filling the storehouse of our heart with goodness and love over time spent filling our pockets with what we will inevitably leave behind (contra the rich man).
If you find yourself subject to the tyranny of time in these summer days, ask God to help you count time as he does, and to begin your day “filled with his kindness,” so that all your days — long or short — may know his “joy and gladness” (Ps 90:14).