There are weeks when God’s presence feels so evident, so beautifully threaded through every conversation and every quiet prayer, that you can almost trace His fingerprints. This past week was one of them. As reports came back from Aya and the mission team in the Philippines, I found myself marveling again at how God handles the details we would never even think to ask for—weather shifting just when it needed to, resources appearing at the exact moment they were required, children receiving what they lacked, adults receiving hope they had forgotten how to express. It was a symphony of divine coordination.

And yet, even while orchestrating that work across an ocean, God was just as present right here in Pittsfield, our little town in Central Maine. In our small Wednesday gatherings. In the hush that settles between prayers. In the struggles and joys of each person who walked through our church doors. It still amazes me that the God who keeps galaxies humming never seems too busy to attend to the quiet cry of a tired believer in Maine.

I had been thinking for days about Psalm 90, especially that simple plea tucked into verse 12:
“Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”

The older I get, the more honest time becomes. It doesn’t apologize for moving. It doesn’t ask permission. It just marches. And yet, rather than depressing me, it has begun to feel more like clarity. Like waking up.

That idea hit me again through an image I couldn’t shake—a man sitting on a bench in the middle of the city. Not a prophet, not a monk, just an ordinary man with silver hair pulled back neatly, jeans faded at the knees, and an old thermos of tea steaming beside him. When he lifts his phone, the screen is spider‑webbed with cracks.

“This,” he says, tapping the broken glass, “is my memento mori. My reminder that everything here breaks. Everything ends. Including me.”

He says it gently, almost amused, as if he’s talking about something freeing instead of something frightening.

Most people avoid the thought of their own limits, pretending they have endless time. But this stranger insists that remembering our finiteness is the first step toward living wisely. When you know the clock is ticking, a random Wednesday suddenly becomes a gift.

He stands, stretches, and walks away as quietly as he arrived. Nothing dramatic. Just a man who knows the value of a moment. And when he disappears into the busy noise of the street, you look down at your own phone—not cracked, but running low on battery—and it hits you: your days are numbered too.

Moses understood that. His psalm pulls no punches. Human life is short, fragile, swept away like grass that springs up in the morning and wilts by dusk. We sleep a third of our lives away. We work another third. The remaining hours scatter into errands, meals, worries, and hopes. And yet, somehow, God asks us to infuse every one of those minutes with meaning. Not because they last—but because He does, and His goal is to show us the value of minutes filled with purpose.

That truth became more than theoretical for me at 4:30 AM the other morning when a text jolted me awake. When your phone is on “Do Not Disturb” except for a select few, you know immediately that whatever is coming is not casual. It was my daughter, —agitated, shaken. My son-in-law had experienced four unexpected medical episodes. She had already called 911 and needed help.

In those moments, time does something strange. It becomes both razor sharp and blurry at the edges. You’re aware of every breath, every fear, every prayer that slips out before you can form the words.

He’s home now. Tests are coming. Answers will follow eventually. But the unexpected moment became something else—an open doorway where God met us in fear, in love, in the simple grace that my daughter reached out to me first and again later to ask for prayer.

The unexpected is often the doorway to the divine. It rarely looks like an invitation. It usually looks like a crisis, a call you didn’t want, a doctor’s appointment you didn’t expect, a loss you never imagined. But in those moments, God leans close.

We forget sometimes that Psalm 90 doesn’t begin with our frailty. It begins with God’s eternity.
“Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations.”

Before mountains.
Before breath.
Before time.
 God was already there—steady, unchanging, unhurried.

We flicker for a moment like sparks tossed into the wind. But He remains. And somehow, in His hands, our small span of years becomes something immense. Sacred. Filled with purpose.

I think that’s why Moses didn’t ask God for longer days, safer days, or easier days.
He asked for wisdom—the ability to live his brief life well.

And maybe that’s the real point.
Not counting our days to fear them.
Not numbering them to regret them.
 But recognizing them as gifts—finite, fleeting, but placed intentionally into the hands of a God who is infinite.

So, we live with the awareness that our days are precious.
We hold loosely what was never ours.
We lean on the God who is everlasting.
 And we offer back to Him the work of our hands, asking Him to establish it—because if He does, even the smallest acts echo into eternity.

I leave you today with this poignant poem by an anonymous author, who hit it out of the proverbial ballpark:

Before mountains rose or rivers ran,
before dust learned to breathe,
You are.

Before calendars, clocks, or candles,
before our hurried days began,
You are.

We flare for a moment—
a spark on the wind—
 and fall to silence.

But You remain:
unmoved,
unaging,
 undaunted by our brevity.

There is no pit so deep,

That you are not deeper still.

Or chasm so wide that you cannot span it

with the palm of Your hand.

You gather our moments
like grains of sand
held in the palm
 of a steady God.

And so our hope
is not in the length of our days,
but in the One
who holds every day
 before it dawns.

From everlasting to everlasting,
You are God.