One day, a man was explaining to a younger man how he was able to determine the correct priorities. He explained to him his theory of a “1,000 marbles.” “One day,” he said, “I sat down and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about 75 years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on average, this is what I can expect.”
“I then multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3,900, which is the number of Saturdays the average person has in their entire lifetime. It took me until I was 55 years old to think about all this in any detail,” he went on, “and by that time I had lived through over 2,800 Saturdays.”
“I got to thinking that if I lived to be 75, I only had about a 1,000 of them left to enjoy. So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round up 1,000 marbles. I took them home and put them inside a large, clear plastic container in my garage. Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away. I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on what is really important in life. There is nothing like watching your time here on earth run out to help get your priorities straight.”
David once said that “our days on the earth are as a shadow” (1 Chronicles 29:15). Peter said that “the glory of man [is] as the flower of grass” which will wither and disappear (1 Peter 1:24). Get your priorities straight! Through your faith, repentance, confession of Christ, and baptism you can enter into a new life of righteousness.
Kyle Campbell
