As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years,
Or if due to strength, eighty years,
Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow;
For soon it is gone and we fly away.
Who understands the power of Your anger
And Your fury, according to the fear that is due You?
So teach us to number our days,
That we may present to You a heart of wisdom. – Psalm 90:10-12
A little over three years ago my best friend, Brent Alderman, went to be with Jesus. It was a bittersweet moment for me: bitter, of course, because I loved him and miss him very much, yet sweet because I know he’s free of the concerns and cares of this world and enjoying the presence of Jesus, where I will one day join him.
We didn’t live very close to one another, so we valued every interaction we had with one another. Our families came to accept the fact that a “short” phone call was likely to last at least 2 hours. I knew he enjoyed those times as much as I did, but it was still very humbling to have both of his brothers volunteer to me at the funeral that they knew how much our relationship meant to him. The best way to describe the impact he had on me is that, no matter how long or short the call or the visit, talking to him always did my soul good.
Brent and I talked about a lot of things over the years, many of them trivial, many more of them weighty and deep. We both had things that we wrestled with over time, so those would regularly find their way into our conversations in one way or another. One of the things he reflected upon frequently was the passage from Psalm 90 I quoted above. It became very important and meaningful to him after his father died in 1991 at the age of 56 after a relatively brief bout with cancer. He could tell you the number of his dad’s days – 20,494 – and he kept track of his own. He made a point to be consciously aware of the number of his days, not because he was worried about how many he might not have, but because he was concerned about what he was doing with the ones he did.
Once, while commenting on this topic, he wrote, “We feel as if a young person’s death took them ‘too soon’, but the Bible teaches us that our days are numbered – while we’re living. Life on earth is short in comparison to eternity. One year or ninety years on earth are both statistically zero when compared to eternity, and as immortal souls made in God’s image, that’s how long we will live … That’s the very reason we all should take seriously the choice we have to follow Jesus or not.”
He also explained how numbering our days results in presenting to God a heart of wisdom. “Our prayer in times of disbelief and confusion, especially when a young person is taken, should be, ‘God, give us perspective. Your perspective. Even though we can never comprehend all of your ways, let us understand how short life is and help us to think more and more like you do. Your Word gives that wisdom.’”
The final number of Brent’s days here on earth was 20,833, only 339 more than his dad’s. If that doesn’t sound like a very big number to you, that’s because, quite frankly, it isn’t. But Brent would chide us for lamenting the size of that number and remind us of an important truth. In 2016, while reflecting on Psalm 90 in the wake of the unexpected death of Miami Marlin’s pitcher Jose Fernandez in a boating accident, he wrote, “Jose Fernandez had 24 years. The 53-year-old brother of a dear high school friend of mine died of cancer last week. My aunt, who accidentally drowned in her pool in Florida a few weeks ago, had 56 years. The great golfer, Arnold Palmer, also died today, aged 87. My mother-in-law, who died in 2015, had 90 years. And you know what? According to the knowledge of God, not one of them died before their time.”
And you know what? Neither did Brent.
I take a lot of solace in that thought. It means that Brent accomplished what the Lord intended for him to do. If he hadn’t, he would still be here. If you feel that his life was cut short, that there are things that remain undone or unsaid, that there is so much more that Brent could have accomplished, then I suggest you quickly pick up where he left off and keep going. You and I are still here, which means there is still more for us to do, and we had best get to it, because our days are numbered as well.
I will confess that this not how I anticipated events would unfold. Even though, given some of his health challenges, I figured I probably would outlive Brent, we were both convinced that my wife, Crystal, would run out of days before he did. I cannot describe to you how eagerly I was looking forward to the comfort of being able to sit on his front porch after she was gone, overlooking Back Creek Valley in West Virginia, reminiscing about the good old days, talking about the future, and watching sunsets together. While that’s clearly not going to happen anymore, I don’t feel cheated. I got to build a special and unique relationship with Brent for over 17,000 of my 21,460 days. If that sounds like a big percentage, that’s because, quite frankly, it is. It was an honor and a privilege I will always cherish. And, with all due respect to West Virginian sunsets, if I die before I’m 90 years old, I only have to wait less than 11,462 days before I get to share a much more beautiful place with Brent than his front porch and do a lot of things with him that will be much more special than reflecting on the vapor that is our time on this fallen and cursed earth. What’s more is that when I get there, nothing — not an amputated leg, not kidney failure, not even death itself — will ever get in the way of that joy again.
Let God teach you to number your days. Learn the wisdom of viewing life from God’s perspective and embrace it. Choose Jesus, love Him, and serve Him. That was the cornerstone of Brent’s life and what motivated him to be the kind of person he was. He would want it to be the same for you.
