New Math

Tomorrow Anina Walberg will finish her 97th year of life and, if God permits, begin her 98th.  She, her friends and family have always counted time by years. In early March, when she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, we began counting time by months.  Then we began counting by weeks.  And now we count time by days.

We also count milliliters when measuring her water consumption.  Ounces when we measure the juice in which to put her medications. Liters when we dial in her oxygen.  Hours when we count how much she sleeps each day.  And we count the number of times we get up with Anina each night.

It was only a few years ago Anina would drive for miles.  Then she had to be driven where she wanted to go.  Then she walked around the block.  Then she was pushed around the block in her wheel chair.  She walked from the bedroom to her office or out to the table to eat.  Then she walked a few feet to the bathroom or her recliner.  Now she rolls a few inches to the left or right to get comfortable.

Anina is learning a new math.  And the measurements mark the boundaries of her earthly existence.  But a day is coming soon when she will enter a place more vast and wonderful than anything she has experienced in her 97 years.  She won’t have to count calories, distance or time. The numbers in her life now seem small and constraining, but today’s numbers are not forever.  Her life is.

King David wisely prayed “Teach us to realize the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom. (Psalm 90:12 NLT)

James wrote, “Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.”  (James 4:13-15 ESV)

The preacher declares in Ecclesiastes, "For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest.  (Ecclesiastes 3:1-2 NLT)

These verses describe life here and now in the world as we know it.  John, the apostle, in his revelation of Jesus Christ records what is ahead for Anina and all those who have been reconciled to God through Jesus, “He [God] will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”  (Revelation 21:4 ESV)

That is what Anina is counting on.