Because it’s Sunday, and therefore unseemly to complain, I won’t mention the terrible weather which is, as I just said, terrible, and certainly some kind of judgment upon humanity for being so awful, and on me personally for eating that seventeenth spoonful of hot artichoke dip.
No, I won’t mention the driving snow and body piercing wind, the deep cold that infiltrates the most carefully tied boot and insinuates itself even inside the faux fur lined glove.
Instead of mentioning the terrible terrible weather, indeed to say Nothing Whatsoever About It, I will rather turn to that familiar old line from the Psalm, because it is New Year’s Eve after all, and a good moment to trace over the words again, even though I’m pretty sure I did it already on my birthday.
You know the line. “Teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom.”
Teaching other people how to number their days is a seriously lucrative industry. And almost as mesmerizing as gaping at perfectly coiffed B List celebrities opening up boxes of ‘surprise’ beauty products are the videos of beautiful young things reviewing planners for the new year. One such video was 23 minutes long and the young lady went speedily through no less than 17 calendars, links provided in the description, each book promising more happiness than the last. More productivity, never falling behind again, always being the master, or indeed mistress, of time itself. Rather than being flattened by the demands and exigencies of modern life, if you just buy this book you will ascend to the holy hill of other people’s, and your own, approbation.
And then I came across this ad for a book that will help you achieve no less than your very dreams. There’s the usual upticking music that will make you want to stab your ears with blunt instrument, and the whole genera of disembodied hands married to the unboxing thrill, but at the end of the day it’s still about writing in little squares and on little lines in a book. It’s about marking out and delineating time for your own satisfaction. It’s about the hope that This Time, perhaps, you will be in control and align yourself with the unseen forces of the universe to ride out, to surf, to ascend to ultimate happiness.
The last person the average day planner connoisseur is looking to for help is God. Even I, who do generally mutter a lot of words at Jesus first thing in the morning, and very often late at night as well, don’t really want to consider the wisdom of his other time as I’m sorting out what I want to do first, and then second, and then the thing after that. I don’t want to learn–I just want to quickly do the task in front of me without being thwarted. I want everyone and everything to get out of my way while I realize all my dreams. And the more I am hindered the more the numbering part frustrates me–I watch the days slip by in futility, pretty sure that if I could just get on top of it, then I would be happy.
I keep saying ‘happiness’ because that’s really the promise of a new year, of a new planner. If you do it this way Finally you’ll be happy. You weren’t last year, but that’s gone now. This time will be different. But that’s, most unhappily, cough, not the promise of the verse. ‘Teach us to number our days,’ we tepidly request, ‘that we may get a heart of’…well, the heart wants happiness, wants fulfillment, wants consummation, wants comfort, wants nostalgia, wants admiration, affection, acclaim, wants love which produces happiness. That’s what the heart wants, what it constantly and restlessly seeks.
The thing the heart doesn’t languish for is wisdom. In ever pursuing happiness, love, and self satisfaction, wisdom is usually left bereft, crouching in the back cupboard as the heart careens from one pressing concern to another. Occasionally wisdom cries allowed and tries to assert herself against the cacophony of phone, busyness, and material consumption that soothes the heart in all its brokenness and ill health. She can sometimes be heard, even on social media, but she isn’t the ordinary person’s constant companion.
Because to listen to her is to stop and consider not the little boxes on the page, the neat even lines promising order and happiness, the idea that if you get to do what you want right now then you’ll be happy forever, but rather to consider the reality that, as the psalmist says a few verses above, “For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night,” and then, “You sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream.” Not your dream for yourself that you think about as you gaze out of the kitchen window, building fanciful castles on Pinterest. But the dream of night that you can’t grasp, that you wake up and it’s gone.
It’s all so short. There isn’t that much time. The boxes stretch out before you for 2018 but one sigh and the book will either be full, or you’ll have forgotten where you put it. Either way, add it to the stack of all the other ones and it was a sigh, your life a brief moment in the face of a God who lasts forever.
If you want to be happy, you’re heart is going to have to find wisdom first. A wisdom that begins with being what the psalmist calls ‘satisfied.’ It’s something you have to ask for, that you can’t really control, that is bigger and grander than anything you scribble on the line or tick off in the box. The planner offers its own peculiar satisfaction, which is why I carry it around day after day, but this is bigger than that.
“Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.” God himself, beyond whatever you can sort out for yourself, even though you are a breath and he is forever, can satisfy you with his steadfast love. A love effulgent with mercy, with forgiveness, with eternity, with patience kindness, with providence, with the intimate concern for everything you are and everything that you’re trying to do. That kind of satisfied rest in God himself might not make you happy, but it will make you substantially and terrifyingly glad, enough so that no matter what happens as the days slip by you’ll be ok.
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