EIGHTY!

Dad turned 80 the other day. To celebrate the notable event were present his two children, daughter-in-law, his two grandkids, and several other relatives and well-wishers. We had a ball!

80! He’s proud of himself, too, for having beaten the Psalmist’s reckoning of human days.

As for the days of our life,
they contain seventy years,
or if due to strength,
eighty years.
Psalm 90:10

Yet, as Moses, who wrote the Psalm, continues, while we might make it to four score, those years on earth are fraught with the frailties and fragilities of sin—ours and everyone else’s. A full life of many years we may be given yet …

… their pride
is but labor and sorrow;
for soon it is gone
and we fly away.
Psalm 90:10

Labor and sorrow, my Dad has seen. God’s grace has brought this man through many tumults in life. He lost his wife, my mother, almost twenty-five years ago; not long afterwards, he had a heart attack; he also lost half of his lower jaw to cancer later, restricting him to a diet of overcooked and mushy foods.

But he’s still going strong. Walking his way through life … literally: at least five times a week, he’s out, by the dawn’s early light, getting his constitutional. A habit he has not neglected for more than a decade. And right now, he’s somewhere 36,000 feet in the air on his way to India for the next several months, in an attempt to escape winter and its pains.

And so, between the US and India, my father circumnavigates, spending a few months here and a few there, spacing out time between his loved ones, spreading good cheer wherever he goes.

Yet, as he often remarks, he’s ready to “go home”. The other day he mentioned how he was planning to convey, before long, all the good news of his family back “home” to his wife. He’s gearing up to go “home”—the REAL home.

Do return, O LORD;
how long will it be?
And be sorry for Your servants.
O satisfy us in the morning
with Your lovingkindness,
that we may sing for joy
and be glad all our days.
Psalm 90:13–14

That morning is coming—soon and very soon. Until then, until the appearance of that Son in the sky, …

… teach us
to number our days,
that we may present to You
a heart of wisdom.
Psalm 90:12

Taking care to spend our days wisely, for God’s glory, with everything we have.

Let the favor
of the Lord our God
be upon us;
and confirm for us
the work of our hands;
yes, confirm
the work of our hands.
Psalm 90:17

The work of that 80-year-old’s hands, God has confirmed in the legacy he has left behind. As Moses prayed, so did my father, and God answered him.

Let Your work appear
to Your servants
and Your majesty
to their children.
Psalm 90:16

The generations he leaves behind continue to gaze awestruck at the majesty of his God as they discover this great One for themselves.

Lord, You have been
our dwelling place
in all generations.
Psalm 90:1

Never aging, never changing, while we, suffering the brutal impact of time, change and age.

Before the mountains were born
or You gave birth
to the earth and the world,
even from everlasting
to everlasting,
You are God.
Psalm 90:1–2

As we serve this great God in the brevity of our earthly days, may we, too, be wise with our time. May God be glorified in our lives!