Yesterday one of my Facebook memories was a post from my friend Jose Luis. It has been years and years since we worked together, but each spring or summer I make sure that I see him when I’m in Ecuador. And in preparation for one of those trips, he wrote that he was “counting the days” until he saw me.
This week will be the Second Sunday in the Season after Pentecost. The Season after Pentecost is also known as “Ordinary Time,” when we use Ordinal Numbers to name the Sundays. The First Sunday. The Second Sunday. This year we’ll get all the way to the Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Pentecost before Christ the King Sunday and then we start naming the weeks in Advent. Even before we reached this very long liturgical season, we were counting. “It’s been 11 weeks since we met in person for worship.” “I haven’t had a haircut in four months.” “We’ve baked 30 loaves of sourdough bread.” There has been plenty to count.
The writer of Psalm 90 reminds us to number our days. To count them, and to treat each day not just like it’s our last, but as a day with purpose. It gets monotonous to keep track of how many days things have been this way. But I pray that we all see through the monotony and recognize each day as one that belongs to God.
