A Good Life

A Reflection on the Psalm for October 10th, 2021:
Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Psalm 90

R. Fill us with your love, O Lord, that we may rejoice and be glad!

Teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart. Turn, O Lord! How long? Have compassion on your servants! 

R. Fill us with your love, O Lord, that we may rejoice and be glad!

Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad as many days as you have afflicted us, and as many years as we have seen evil. 

R. Fill us with your love, O Lord, that we may rejoice and be glad!

Let your work be manifest to your servants, and your glorious power to their children. Let the favour of the Lord our God be upon us, and prosper for us the work of our hands. 

R. Fill us with your love, O Lord, that we may rejoice and be glad!

Apparently, many thoughtful people, including Gandhi and Billy Graham, have said, “Live each day as if it were your last.”


Were I to live each day as if it were my last, I would never have clean laundry — because, let’s face it, who wants to do laundry on their last day?


While I do appreciate the sentiment behind the saying, I can’t help but think how pressurizing and exhausting it would be for many people to try to live their lives this way — squeezing in one bucket-list activity after another in a frenzied collecting of experiences. 


Living each day as if it were my last does not resonate with me. I much prefer the advice of the psalmist, whom we will hear this Sunday. He says, “Teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart.” 


I think the difference between living each day as if it were our last and counting our days lies in charting a course through life that chooses love and seeks wisdom as opposed to making the most of a moment. 


If we choose to move through life, praying that God will guide our work and bless it, loving others (which is hard and complicated), and asking for forgiveness, I believe that (for many of us) our last day, whenever it comes, will not be filled with frantic activity. We will not be calling people to mend our broken relationships with them, reassuring people that we love them and believe in them, and bequeathing money to worthy causes. 


If we are intentional about “counting our days,” we might be content to spend our last hours in prayer and thanksgiving for a life well lived and for mercy in the world to come. We would know that our family and friends are confident in our love for them. We would have provided for the charities we want to support. We would have spent time admiring nature. And, yes, we would have done our laundry because a life well lived is a mixture of the exciting and the mundane, the unexpected and the routine. 


Our life on this earth is short. If we are to live a good life, we must chart and then follow a course that allows our last day to be peaceful because we know we have not put off doing what is most important, the work and tasks that God has called and equipped us to do. Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived a life informed by the love of God.


Let the favour of the Lord our God be upon us, and prosper for us the work of our hands — O prosper the work of our hands!




Donna Davis

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