So Teach Us To Number Our Days by Kori Morgan

The mural stretched across the length of the space above the grand oak doors that led into the auditorium. It was commissioned as a gift from the class of 1923, the second class to graduate from my middle school years before I set foot in it, when it was first my hometown’s brand-new high school.

Painted against a beige background with maroon letters, the mural’s medieval script spelled out Psalm 90:12 in the richness of the King James text: “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”

I was terrified to go to middle school. Over the summer, seventh grade loomed in the future like a threatening oncoming storm. I couldn’t stop thinking about the multiple classrooms with multiple teachers, the locker combination I was sure to lose, the sixth-grade bullies picking up where their mind games and abuse left off the year before.

But that wasn’t how it turned out. A new group of friends invited me to sit with them at lunch. I made fourth chair violin in the school orchestra. One of my new friends encouraged me to try out for drama club with her, and I got one of the leads in the fall play.

Soon, I found myself living in the auditorium for music and play rehearsals. And every time I walked through those big, oak doors, I saw the mural.

So teach us to number our days.

I didn’t know what that meant. Was it like counting the days until summer vacation? Like in that Amelia Bedelia book where she’s told to add dates to a cake and puts in cut-up pieces from a calendar? 

I knew it was from the Bible. I was an atheist. But I still wondered what it meant, if it was a kind of secret code that kept something significant hidden from me.

Years later, I became a Christian. I came across the verse during a Bible study and remembered that mural, the anticipation of opening night, the excitement of a music rehearsal, my fingers itching to play the violin. 

I don’t know how God was with me then, or what he tried to teach me through those letters painted a century ago. 

What I do know is this—the God I did not believe in saw me, a thin girl with long hair she refused to cut, wearing green nail polish, a blue backpack slung over her shoulder. He gave her a glimpse of what was possible, knowing she would one day see what he prepares for those who love him; that one day, she would believe.

I think of the mural whenever I read Psalm 90, of the students who chose it as the gift to memorialize their class long ago. I imagine them praying over its commission, unaware that someday, its words would be buried like a seed in a thirteen-year-old girl’s memory until she was ready to receive its growth.

I number my days, weighing them like dust in my hands, and thank him as it blows away, knowing that this is wisdom.

Kori Frazier Morgan is a fiction writer, poet, and essayist whose work has appeared in numerous literary journals. She is the founder of Inkling Creative Strategies, an editing and consulting business that helps writers reach their full creative potential so they can impact and inspire readers. She enjoys teaching Sunday school and serving in ministry with her husband, Curtis.