One of the members of our prayer circle was asked to choose a hymn. She immediately picked, “What if it be today…Jesus will come back someday.” As we finished the song I asked her if she would tell the group why she chose it. She placed her fingers around the oxygen tube that enables her to breathe and laughed.

It is a rich experience for me to pray with people who see their lives on earth in terms of decades not generations, years not decades, months not years, weeks not months, days not weeks and sometimes hours not days.

But why do we count? My five year old granddaughter told me her great grandpa had a stroke. She went on to explain that he was very old because he was her daddy’s mother’s father. After she described how he looked in his hospital bed I asked her if she thought he would see Jesus soon.

She looked at me with what I have now come to recognize as instructional eyes and patiently explained, “Well, Besta, nobody knows WHEN they will see Jesus!”