I finished transferring all our family dates – births, baptisms, anniversaries, deaths – onto our 2025 calendar this week and included some dear friends and events we don’t want to forget. Ok, I started it in January (!) but only did up to February then but now it is all complete and finished and hanging up in the kitchen. For many years we’ve enjoyed a wonderful Christmas present of a ‘home made’ calendar with family photos for each month – I can lose time simply stopping and looking at it! (The blank dates – when I looked below the photos – finally made me too guilty to leave blank! J )
Many dates have nothing written; other dates have more than one thing written. Of course things happened for our family and friends on the ‘blank’ days – and maybe of significance too – but they are not recorded and won’t be until someone says, “Hey, what about …?” or we remember. Such remembering adds to the tapestry of our lives. We are unique. And the perspective that came to me particularly as I wrote baptismal details – my eldest child and I share a baptismal birthday (last Sunday) – is that God is with us through every day. Often we can think he’s not – especially when things happen that we don’t want to happen – or that he doesn’t care or help. Our baptism is when we are linked to Jesus’ death and resurrection – born again into a life where there is no eternal death – and that perspective can and does shape how we view calendars, days, and events.
Psalm 90 is often thought of when we think of time and age and longevity. It can be used at funerals and sometimes people only want to hear the first part but we should read all of it. Go on, do it today sometime! J But for now I’d like to close with the last verses (Psalm 90:12-17 ESV) and with the thought, ‘Give us peace and wisdom each day, Lord!’ …
12 So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.
13 Return, O LORD! How long? Have pity on your servants!
14 Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
15 Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, and for as many years as we have seen evil.
16 Let your work be shown to your servants, and your glorious power to their children.
17 Let the favour of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us; yes, establish the work of our hands!