God often weaves my life’s tapestry with interlocking threads.

One of my favorite songs in the psalter is Psalm 90, a prayer of Moses, which I’ve reflected on over the years here and here and here. I also wrote a meditation on it that appears in my devotional A Month of Sundays. But in recent weeks, personal circumstances have caused my husband and me to refer frequently to its petition: “Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us” (verse 15a).

God seemed to embroider my tapestry with a golden thread last Sunday evening, when guest pastor Rev. Mark Vander Hart (a longtime family friend) preached on Psalm 90. You can listen to his sermon, A Necessary Prayer to Establish Us, via a link on this sermon page (5-3-15 PM).

Only three days later, the May 6 morning reflection in the Morning and Evening devotional by Charles Spurgeon was based on 1 John 4:14 and reinforced the concept of God as our dwelling place. Spurgeon asked, “Do you want a house for your soul?” He made the point that this dwelling comes “without price,” even though we would like “to pay a respectable rent” and “do something” to win Christ and have the house. We can pay nothing but the “ground-rent of loving and serving him forever,” dwelling in Jesus and feasting on his love.

When this world shall have melted like a dream, our house shall live, and stand more imperishable than marble, more solid than granite, self-existent as God, for it is God himself–“We dwell in him.”

When Rev. Vander Hart spoke about God as our dwelling place, he referred to Ephesians 1:3-10 and emphasized about how God chose us from the foundation of the world and how we’ve been with him a long, long time.

Rev. Vander Hart’s references to deadlines especially resonated with me. As a writer, I live with constant deadlines. Each day I face outside and self-imposed deadlines. But Sunday’s sermon reminded me of my ultimate deadline: death.

Rather than being morbid, that reminder is motivating. We don’t see how God weaves every thread into the tapestry of our lives. But the Utlimate Weaver creates each of his children into a beautiful masterpiece.

He provides six days each week to work for him, and he gives each of us our own personal and inevitable deadline. He has determined our exact number of days (Psalm 139:16). Let’s make the most of them!