When I came home from a recent trip my wife, Sandy, was talking about a series of Beth Moore lessons on the book of Daniel that she and some other women had been doing. In the course of her recounting what she was learning she quoted Moore as saying that “We only have 10 minutes here on earth,” (or something to that affect.)
“Where did she get that” I asked?
Sandy’s response was that Beth was making a general statement on the brevity of life.
“But where did she get 10 minutes?” I continued to probe. Sandy insisted that it was a generic statement and I was missing the point. I wouldn't let it go. I began thinking about the passage in Scripture that says that, “with the Lord, one day is like a thousand years” (2 Peter 3:8). That being true, if the average life of man is 70 years, is that where Moore came up with we have about 10 minutes on this earth?
God knows I am not a mathematician. I tried to figure it out but couldn’t. I took my math problem to my 14 year old grand-daughter and, though she’s a lot smarter than me, couldn’t find the right equation. I drove my whole family nuts for a week trying to figure out, if man lives to 70 years old, how old is he in God’s economy of time? Finally, a friend wrote and gave me, what I assume is the answer – 1 hour, 40 minuets and 48 seconds based on this equation:
70 years is .07% of a thousand.
So we must find .07 of a day.
A day has 1440 minutes. 24 X 60 = 1440
.07 X 1440 = 100.8
So we have 100 minutes plus .8 of a minute, which is 48 seconds.
Thus: 100 minutes and 48 seconds old.
Idle trivia? Perhaps. But as one watching his 88 year old dad slowly moving out of this life, grateful that he has beat the odds and is 2 hours and 11 minutes old, and my own life of not yet 1 hour and half, I understand more the sobering reality of, "For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away" (Ja. 4:14).
