Today is a milestone for me. No, it's not my birthday; that comes soon enough. No, it's not another anniversary. Well, "anniversary" does not exactly fit.
Today is the 20,000th day of my life. Twenty thousand. That's a 2, followed by 4 zeroes. That is 28 million, 800 thousand minutes. It's 103 billion, 680 million seconds, if I did the math right.
Twenty thousand sunrises. Twenty thousand times I have heard birds sing (and they started early this morning!). Twenty thousand opportunities to look up at the sky and thank God for his beautiful creation. Twenty thousand times. Think of it.
I don't know what God's "clock" looks like, but knowing I have lived 20 thousand days makes me take stock of my life and ask what I have done with so much time. Admittedly, I don't like all the answers I could give.
There is one answer for which I am eternally grateful: there has been more than enough grace for each of those 20 thousand days that I have lived. Romans 5 tells us that where sin increased, grace increased all the more. This is so grace could rein. In my life, that's 103 billion, 680 million seconds of God's grace; poured out; overflowing; increasing according to need.
Get the picture that God paints for us: sin overflowed like a river in the rainy season. It floods everything it can touch. I have seen that kind of flood. I saw the Mississippi River in the floods all throughout Tennessee and Missouri. They tell me it was pretty precarious down in Mississippi, too. But I was in those states when I saw Old Man River at its worst. Sin ravages us like that. But along comes grace, overflowing even more than sin. Wiping it out. Covering it up. Grace reins.
No wonder John Newton shouted out through his great hymn, "Amazing Grace! How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me!"
If I have another 20 thousand days--and I would not mind it a bit--I have the joy of knowing God's grace is sufficient for every single one of them.
Yes, grace reins. All day. Every day. Forever.
2 comments:
Congratulations on being granted 20,000 days of life. That makes you 55 years old (if I did my math right)? :)
Every day is a gift from the Lord. We realized this as a family this past week with the passing of my wife's youngest brother. Nobody expected him to be the first to leave us. All of us need to give thanks for the grace bestowed upon us each and every day.
Not 55, yet, bro. I am getting there, but not till June. :-)
I am sorry to hear about your b.i.l.'s passing. It is a reminder of how valuable the life God has given us really is.
KDS
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