I heard about a minister who always prepared his sermons at the last minute, and he thought he was a pretty good preacher.  His congregation didn’t think he was quite as good as he thought he was.  But he prepared his sermons, as I say, at the last minute.  In fact, the parsonage where he lived was right next door to the church, and he would brag that he could prepare his sermons on Sunday mornings just in the time it took him to walk from the parsonage to the church.  Well, I guess he bragged about this one too many times, because the next week the church went out and bought a new parsonage 25 miles away. 

Now I don’t think this minister is a good example, but I have to say that I do admire those who live their lives somewhat spontaneously, somewhat extemporaneously, in the moment, as we say sometimes.  I admire those who seem to have a sense of urgency about life.           

I heard about a couple who were in their late 90s, and they went out to eat at a restaurant.  They didn’t have a reservation, and it was busy, and so the host told them that they would have a 45-minute wait for a table.  But the husband told the host, “Young man, I’m 98 years old, and my wife is 97.  We may not have 45 minutes.”  They were seated immediately, I understand.           

I don’t know whether we live with more urgency or less as we get older.  But I read about a young man by the name of David, who played college basketball, and he played so well that he started as a freshman.  But then the season was over and it was discovered that he had cancer and his leg had to be amputated.  His short-lived basketball career was over, and he was interviewed after the operation, and someone asked, “David, is there anything in your life you would do over?”  And his response was, “Well, if I had known that that was going to be my last game, if I had known that I would never play college basketball ever again, that night no one would have been able to stop me, no one would have stopped me.” 

Now my guess is that this young man David probably played his heart out, even though he didn’t know this would be his last game.  But what about me?  I sometimes wonder.  What about you?  There’s an urgency that we miss sometimes, I think, when we think that oh well, we don’t really have to worry about it today, whatever it is, we don’t really have to tackle anything important today, there’s always tomorrow, always tomorrow, to do the great thing.   

Do you remember that line from “Alice in Wonderland?  It must have been Tweedledum, or maybe it was Tweedledee, who says to Alice, “Usually I’m very brave, only today, I have a headache.”  I mean, usually we all of us would say that we are very brave and very pure and true, in what we imagine we might one day be.  The problem is that we never seem to get around to actually being any of these things.  In an Arthur Miller play, I forget which one, but I remember the lines, there’s a middle-aged couple who are reminiscing about their lives.  It has all turned out to be such a disappointment.  At one point, the wife says to her husband, “It’s as if we never were anything.  We were always just about to be something.” 

I don’t know about you, but these words haunt me sometimes, they kind of haunt me, “We were always just about to be something, but we never actually were anything.” 

Annie Dillard, a writer you may know, says this, “One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time.  Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now.  The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now.  Something more will arise for later, something better.  Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful it is destructive.  Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you.  You open your safe and find ashes.” 

When I was in my last year of seminary, before you could graduate, every student had to do a thesis project.  And I usually work ahead on things, so I finished my project early and turned it in.  And then I sat down and talked with my professor.   And I could tell as we talked that she was pleased.  And my immediate reaction was to think that well, now I can just kind of loaf through the rest of the semester, I can just kind of rest and relax and take it easy until I graduate.  But my professor said, “Duane, you’ve still got some time left before this is due.  Why don’t you really pour yourself into this, why don’t you really work hard these next couple of weeks, and use the power of the deadline, the power of really putting your life into this knowing that there’s a deadline coming up, to make this a truly significant piece of work, to make this a masterpiece.”  So that’s what I tried to do. 

There’s a deadline looming for all of us, and we don’t know just precisely when that will be.  There is this urgency to life that we do miss sometimes, the urgency of a life that is fulfilled and fulfilling, the urgency of a life that is abundant, the urgency of being aware of God’s grace, and receiving that grace, and then sharing that grace with others. 

Last week I told you about the captain of a slave ship who had a conversion experience that changed his life, John Newton.  A friend of John Newton, a man by the name of William Wilberforce, also had an experience of God that changed his life.  And once he found his way he was determined to make two major changes in his life.  He felt before his conversion that his life had been a waste, he had wasted both his money and his time.  But now he determined that he would use everything he had, he would use these two things he possessed, these two precious things we all possess, his money and his time, for God’s glory, and to make a difference in the world.  And Wilberforce is the man who is primarily responsible, through his relentless work, for ending slavery in England. 

I heard about a man who was walking along the beach one day, and he saw a boy walking toward him, and the boy kept picking something up off the beach and flinging it into the ocean.  When they drew closer together, the man asked the boy, “What are you doing?”  And the boy said that he was picking up starfish and hurling them back into the ocean.  They would die if they just laid there and were burned up by the sun, so he was throwing them back into the ocean.  And the man kind of scoffed at this and said, but don’t you know how many beaches there are in the world, don’t you know how many starfish there must be lying around on all these beaches.  What you’re doing can’t possibly be making any difference.  And the boy, as he picked up another starfish and threw it into the ocean, said, “It made a difference to that one, didn’t it?” 

I like what the writer of Psalm 90 says here. “Teach us to number our days.”  Teach us to understand what our days might mean, what our time here on earth might mean.  Teach us to realize what use we might put into each day, into each hour, into each moment, into each action.  Teach us to number our days.  It’s only too late if you don’t start now.