Day one hundred (100)

I feel compelled to write today because it is 100 days since I last worked (full-time). The emphasis is in the title: One hundred (100).

There are black clouds hanging overhead (my own black clouds), but I will write anyway. I have just booked an Occupational Health meeting. The earliest date was the 26th February. But it's booked - 9: 30am. Whatever recommendations they make will have some influence over my future.

And I got thinking about that. Just lately I have been reading 6 books. I normally have 5 on the go at the same time, but as I am off work there was space for 1 more. These are theology, psychology and philosophy books I might add, not novels. And my way of reading books is similar to my approach to life. I am not a "busy but" - people, when requesting something always start with, "I know you're busy, but...." But there are usually a number of things going on that demand (demand sounds ... demanding. Maybe I should have written "require"?) my attention. And like my 5 (or 6) books, I have to compartmentalise everything. I can't pick up a theology book and think I'm reading psychology for instance.

And with life, I have to remember where I am so that I can be the right version of me in that situation. A friend of mine who understood me used to talk about my "Public Image". I have often thought about that over the years.

Anyway, I am down to a mere 5 books because I finished one yesterday morning. I have just finished another one, but as it was Volume 11 of The Works of John Wesley, I have put my bookmark in Volume 12, which I will start tomorrow.

I have just read 10 pages of a psychology book and I noted that I have 89 pages to go. I have a book on Holiness Theology next to my bed, and I am nearly at the halfway mark.

And that is how I am with books. When I get halfway through I know that I am almost there. When I get to the last 100 pages I know when there are 99 pages to go; 80 pages to go; 70 pages... When I get to the last 30 pages I start thinking, "I can finish this now." And I usually do. I imagine that there are many books in my library in which I have no idea what the last 29 pages say, because I rushed to finish them.

And so that is how I view my life. I don't remember how it began: I have heard a couple of versions; I don't remember getting to the middle. When was that? How do we know when we have reached middle-age? When is life in the middle? How do we know when it ends?

I was talking to someone last year who had "had a fall". She is in her early 70s and I told her she was talking like an old woman: young people "fall"; old people "have a fall"! What do middle-aged people do?

Anyway, whenever the middle was I know I am in the second half of my life. I don't know how many pages I have left. That GP, who told me my cholesterol was too high, gave me 10 years. Last summer we discovered that my "birth mother" died at the age of 72, so if that means anything, I am nearing the end.

Next month it will be 36 years since I became a minister in the Church of the Nazarene. Most of my ministry is behind me.

And there is that desire to rush to the end. Remember that dark cloud I mentioned at the beginning of this post!

Psalm 90: 10 says, "Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away."

And so how do I number my days? In Psalm 39: 4 the psalmist writes, "Show me, Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is".

Fleeting it is! But do I want to know how it ends? Maybe not!

And as morbid as this may sound, Psalm 90: 12 says, "Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom."

So even though I can't speed up my "reading" for the rest of my days, I can number them and, who knows, maybe "gain a heart of wisdom."

And I'll try not to rush. The last 30 might be good. I may find out "whodunnit"!