Make it Count

In his book The Life You've Always Wanted, John Ortberg talks about a disease he calls "hurry sickness." He discusses how we Americans are addicted to speed (the concept, not the drug). Remember what made Dominoes Pizza famous? Thirty minute delivery! The founder of Dominoes once said, "We don't sell pizza, we sell delivery." (Ortberg adds, "and if you've ever tasted a Dominoes pizza, you know what he means.") In every area of life, we expect to be able to get what we want as quickly as possible. We structure our lives in such a way that we cram as much activity as possible into narrow windows of time...eating while we drive, talking on our cell phones while we walk, reading while we watch TV. We know we really have hurry sickness when we drive up to every red light attempting to predict which lane will move fastest ("On the right, there are five cars. On the left, only two, but one is a cement truck and the other is a '78 Bonneville whose left-turn blinker has been on for the past five blocks...which lane should I choose?"). We get seriously bummed if we choose the "wrong" lane and add thirty seconds to our driving time.

In all this hurry, are we really accomplishing anything lasting? Our DVRs enable us to record an entire season of our favorite show and watch it in one stretch without commercials, but will that change anyone's eternity? I can multi-task with the best of them, but does that help anyone find their purpose in life?

The biggest tragedy of all is to get to the end of one's life and realize that we have wasted our precious years. As we continue in our Sunday morning series on responding to unbelievers the way Jesus did, we'll look this Sunday at Psalm 90:12, which commands us to "number our days." What does that mean? And how can we live in such a way that every day counts? That's what we'll discuss this Sunday.