Psalms 90:12

Let us not run from the way things really are, he asks. Let us gain by it: "So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom." Here is the "beginning of wisdom," because here is the "fear of the Lord," and the fear of the Lord is that beginning. Here the soul finds how much it needs Him, turns to Him, and seeks to have Him turn to it.

Verse 12 gives us the first request which, it is easy to see, exerts a controlling influence on all the rest. We are only the feeble dying children of Adam, and much is gained if we simply recognise that fact. As long as we do not number our days rightly, we imagine ourselves to be something other than what we are. So we apply our hearts to pleasure or money-making or sport or a hundred and one things of small importance. When we number our days rightly and see the plight we are in, we apply our hearts to wisdom. And the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.

Since our days are short, we need grace from God to number them, that is, to keep them under close observation, so that we do not lose the lessons each day is intended to teach. It is such exercise by which we "gain a heart of wisdom."

In how many ways is God begging man to consider his own condition, if nothing else! In how many languages is this "Adam, where are you?" repeated to the present day! ... And here is Wisdom crying in the streets, even where there is no speech and no word: "So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom." Man never does this until God teaches him.

I call attention to the way a spiritual man numbers his days. I refer to Caleb, a man who wholly follows the Lord, a man of God who can count his days by the thousand. Another man has to say, "Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life" — he had lived 130 years when he spoke. I refer to Jacob. As he looked back, how many days there were in which he had no contact with God — lost days, not to be numbered. Solemn, in the light of the day of God, to lose days.

When God turned Adam and Eve out of Eden for their sin, He set angels at the entrance to the garden, with a flaming sword turning every way to guard the way to the tree of life. There was both mercy and judgment in this. It was mercy, that he might know his feebleness and frailty, and learn so to number his days as to apply his heart to wisdom. ... How can such a feeble creature fail to turn with true repentance to the only One in whom help and mercy can be found?

But to avert His judgment is comparatively a little thing. The heart truly touched longs after Himself. How can a creature be satisfied apart from his Creator? "Satisfy us in the morning with Your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days." How rarely do we find joy in God like this!