Counting the Days

February of 2017 begins my second year as senior pastor of Zion. For those who may be wondering it will be day 731. During the last 24 months we have laughed together when I would announce how many days I have been your pastor. The reason I started counting the days was to be intentional with time. It helped to give me a reference point from where I had come and where we were going. I do that with other things too, like this year my wife Barbara and I celebrated our thirty-third wedding anniversary that would be 12,054 days we have been together. Psalm 90:12 tell us that we should number our days, “So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart.”  Job 8:9 says, “for we are but of yesterday, and we know nothing, for our days on earth are but a shadow.”

One thing I hear again and again is that there are never enough days in our lives. No matter how long we live, we always want more time. We want more time with family, more time to do the things we love, and more time to get ahead. But as much as we want more time, it is the one thing that we can’t change. We all have 24 hours or 1440 minutes every day. How we use this time is up to us.

We all have a lot of intentions to use our time wisely. They are good intentions. But they usually remain only intentions. How will this year be different? How will your intentions become something more than a wish to become actions that affect your time? This February 19, Zion will gather at or annual congregational meeting to reflect on where we have come and what we have accomplished. Even more important we will begin to lay out where we are going in the months to come and the work that still needs to be done. I invite you join us at 10:10 in Piper Hall. All Faith Formation classes have been cancelled for this important meeting.

We gather for worship on the first day of the week, so that we can be fed and nourished to be the people of God all week long. In worship God receives our praise and prayers as simple offerings and shapes our intentions into actions. It is in the gathering of God’s people, God reminds us that it is in faith our days will be blessed. This February the gospel lessons will focus on Jesus’s sermon on the mountain. Here Jesus will challenge us to be salt and light in the world. We will be called to choose life by loving and obeying God. We are called to respond to evil with love and forgiveness. Then just before we enter the season of Lent we are given a vision of Jesus’s glory in the Transfiguration.

May we all be intentional with the time God has given us, to do the work that God has given us to do. The prophet Micah reminds us of what God desires; “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Micah 6:8