At the end of the day, you’re another day older.

This lyric from Les Miserables has been on my mind this week as I spent it packing up my room and parts of our house as we prepare to move from Cambridge to Brighton. While I am grateful for another box or two packed away, I find myself asking, “What can it mean that we grow older each day?”

Yes, it does mean we age physically. But it can also mean growing up a little bit better, a little more wiser than I am today as I look forward to tomorrow. I’d like to think this is a Christian way to appreciate growing older each day. It is about maturing into the persons we were created to become.

In his humanity, Jesus models the way we can do this. He ended each day looking back on his experience of God’s presence in the people and events he had and in the sharing of God’s love he enjoyed. He did this in prayer. His was a prayer of thanksgiving for God’s blessings but also for God’s action in his life.

Jesus’ example of thanksgiving offers us three ways to mature in wisdom in God. First, we can recognize that we are in fact rich: we do already have much in life. The poor teach us this in their generous sharing of smiles and nods even as we avoid their outstretched hands. Second, we can celebrate that this wealth will always be ours: God cannot not give abundantly because we are his. We only need to pause and marvel that we are alive, even with our faults and sins, to acknowledge this. Third, we can share our wealth with others because we will always have more than enough. Our ability to make time for others is proof of this.

Perhaps, to be wise is to have the humility to know that our who, what and why questions about the meaning of our lives find their answer in God daily.

Might this then not be a better way to understand what it means to grow older at the end of each day?

photo: autumn sunset over the charles river by adsj