Show me, O Lord, my life's end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man's life is but a breath.
-- Psalm 39:4-5
I still get goose bumps thinking about a certain Friday night back in 1966. I had returned home early from a date to a dark and empty house; and so, before I went upstairs to bed, I grabbed a snack out of the fridge, sat at my baby grand piano and played a few favorites. Later, as I was about to jump into bed, I heard a horrible crash from downstairs. With no one yet home, and all the house still dark, I dived under the bed. I was convinced a burglar was in the house.
Thirty minutes ticked silently by with not a stirring anywhere. Cautiously, I crept downstairs, flicking on lights as I went. When I switched on the living room lamp, I gasped. There, covering the piano bench, were huge, heavy elk horns. They had fallen from the high vaulted rafter above the baby grand. I looked closer and collapsed on the steps when I saw two of the horns piercing through the thick wooden bench - the bench where I had sat only an hour earlier.
God only knows the times your life is threatened by near-misses and almost-accidents. Only heaven will reveal how the delays or detours we call frustrating actually deflected deadly tragedy. Every once in a while, God pulls back the invisible veil to show us "what could have been," such as in my elk horn story. I was saved for a purpose! And so are you. As Job tells us, "Man's days are determined; you have decreed the number of his months and have set limits he cannot exceed" (v 14:5).
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Teach us to number our days, aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. That's Psalm 90 and it's also my prayer, O Lord.
