Number your days
Moses, the psalm of a mortal life
Psalm 90 carries Moses' name, and it reads like a man who has buried a generation in the wilderness. Our years come to an end like a sigh, he writes; they are soon gone, and we fly away. Against that brevity he prays not for more time but for wisdom to use it: teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Numbering your days is not morbid; it is clarifying. A leader who feels the shortness of time stops spending it on trivialities. Mortality, honestly faced, becomes a strange ally of vision — it forces the question of what actually deserves the few years you have. The heart grows wise when it stops pretending time is endless.
“I must work the works of him who sent me while it is day. The night is coming, when no one can work.”
— Jesus, on the urgency of the day — John 9:4 (WEB)
Time is short, and facing that honestly is clarifying. Numbering your days forces the question of what actually deserves the few years you have.
“So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”
Moses prayed to feel the brevity of life, not to escape it. A leader formed here lets mortality sharpen his priorities rather than depress him. The inner work is trading the illusion of endless time for the wisdom that comes from honestly measured days.
Lead with a sense of the clock. Help your team weigh what truly deserves their limited time and energy, and cut the trivial. Let urgency about what matters replace busyness about everything.
Leaders act as though time is infinite and spend it accordingly — on the trivial, the merely urgent, the endlessly deferred. The blind spot is never reckoning with how few days there actually are.
Honestly estimate how much working time you have left in this season of leadership. This week, let that number reorder one priority.
Leaders who imagine time is endless fritter it on the trivial. But a life honestly measured against its own brevity gets clarified — the few years you actually have press the question of what deserves them.
If you truly numbered your days, what would you stop giving your time to — and what would you finally begin?