Count your days

September is the perfect time of year to evaluate your life and plan for the remaining months. Even amid a global pandemic when the only thing you can depend on is you cannot depend on anything. Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, "In preparing for battles, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." Eisenhower and countless others have discovered that planning is critical, especially when the environment is uncertain.

In the Bible Psalm 90:12 offers wisdom as to how to begin to make plans when you have to overcome obstacles you cannot imagine, when you are uncertain what tomorrow might bring and when there is much out of your control. The verse reads, "So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom." This verse offers three practices enabling you to move towards the future, especially when the only certainty you have is uncertainty.

First, count the days you have, not the days you wish you had. Each of us has been allotted a number of days. We are not guaranteed any of them. Yet how many days have been spent daydreaming about what life could be. What if instead of fantasizing about the days you wish you had, you took one step to embrace the day you are given. Determine today to take one action making your day count.

Second, recognize that there is a purpose even in the upside days. The prayer of Psalm 90:12 is that the days are numbered. That is, they possess an inherent value as given, not only in what is accomplished. In planning for the latter portion of the year, value the gift of the day. The day can't count if you don't value it.

Lastly, your days form who you are more than describe your accomplishments. Embracing character formation as a priority over getting things done means that even if this chaotic year's remainder becomes even more confusing, those days are not wasted. God can form the sharpest character in the most turbulent seas. Your character matters more than your accomplishments.

Even in those seemingly uncertain and chaotic moments, there is purpose. Even if 2020 continues to surprise and frustrate us, God is not absent. Every day counts. Count every day.