All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. (Psalm 139:16)

As of my birthday this year, I had lived 14,975 days. That's about half the number of days the average American can expect to live. We normally measure our age by the number of years we have lived, but maybe David was onto something when he wrote the words of this psalm verse and described his life in terms of days.

We generally take for granted each day that the sun will come up, we will go about our routine and then go to bed that night. Unless we have something exciting planned, we don't expect one day to be much different from the next. But life has a way of changing our plans all too unexpectedly, doesn't it? We don't start off a day expecting to have a car accident, to lose a job, to hear an ominous diagnosis from the doctor or to go to the hospital. When you stop to think of it that way, isn't it foolish of us to assume that one day will be like the next as if we can control what happens? The book of James even tells us: "Now listen, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.' Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow...Instead, you ought to say, 'If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.' As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil" (James 4:14-16). It is the height of sinful human arrogance for us to live our lives as if we can count on what will happen on any given day.

But through David, the LORD invites us to look at our days God's way. David had some tough days. One day he had to fight the giant, Goliath. For many days he hid in caves, running from King Saul who wanted to kill him. And those were just some of the bad days David had. David even knew how miserable sin and guilt can make each day when for about a year he refused to confess his sin of committing adultery with Bathsheba and murdering her husband. Yet we don't find David complaining about how lousy those days were. Instead he calmly acknowledges to the LORD, "All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." Even before the day when David was conceived or the day he came from his mother's womb, David was on the LORD's schedule. The LORD knew everything that would happen on every day of David's life. And as we read Bible history and see David's life unfold, we see the LORD working on those days in such a way that in both good and bad times he guided David like a shepherd to bring him to heaven.

The same Good Shepherd knows every one of our days too even before we do--even before those days come to be. Even before the sun rises he knows the joys and sorrows that will fill those days. Perhaps today will be your last day on earth. Perhaps today you'll get tragic news. Those things might surprise us, but they won't surprise the God before whom all of our days are crystal clear. Remember, the LORD is our God who made this universe from nothing in six days and who raised our Savior from death on the third day. He is the gracious, forgiving God who has appointed a final day on which he will judge the world and take his believers to heaven. Though we are less powerful to control the events of our days than we think, the things that happen on any given day are not beyond the control of our almighty, all-knowing God. No matter how many days on earth he gives you, he has them already recorded in his book and he will use those days to guide you with his word to the endless day of heaven.