How I spent my summer vacation

Do you remember those essays you had to write on the first day of school? They began, "I spent my summer vacation ..." followed by what seemed like hours of tapping your pencil on the blank paper in front of you. There always seemed to be that one kid in the front row center who wrote feverishly on the adventures he or she had taken that summer.

Well kids, get your pen and paper out. In a few weeks children all across the nation will be tapping their pencils, writing the essay "How I spent my summer vacation."

This is a great assignment not only for schoolchildren but for all those who are young at heart. Thinking about your summer vacation forces each of us to take stock in where are, what we are doing and how we have lived.

Psalm 90:12 reads, "So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom." According to 2004 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the average life expectancy for an American is 77.9 years. Let's just say we all get enough sleep and eat well and we will live to see 80. This means from the day you were born until you die at age 80, you will have lived 29,200 days. According to research, you will spend 24 years of your life asleep. You will spend an average of two weeks waiting at traffic lights and two years on the phone. With your cell phone, you can spend more time on the phone while you're waiting for the traffic light.

The point is this: When all the necessities of life -- sleeping, eating, waiting -- are done, a lot of the precious time we have been given has dwindled away.

The prayer of the psalmist is that we will learn to number our days. That we will learn to make the few days we counted really count. The psalmist writes that if we learn to number our days our hearts will be full of wisdom to actually use those days rather than just exist.

We have received our assignment. We all know we have a limited number of days. We all have a page with one line on it in front of us. It reads, "I spent my summer vacation ..." Completing the rest of the page is up to you.

Rob Hurtgen is a husband, father and serves as the associate pastor at the First Baptist Church in Jackson.