Measuring the Year: How to Make the Most of Every 365 Days

The quintet Pentonix sings a song called  The Seasons of Love. In it, they ask, “how do you measure a year?”

The song struck a chord with me as I was doing my end-of-the-year wrap-up review.

We measure a year in many ways. For our calendar, it is 365 days or 52 weeks or 525,600 minutes or 31 million seconds. Is that a year?

What makes a year?

• Is it the number of tasks you accomplish? Many do volumes of unnecessary things.
• Is it bank accounts that go up or down, evaluating what you think you own?
• Is it changes in life? Retirements, births, deaths, and moves could mark the days of a year.

Moses knew about years and time. He lived life in three acts. In one, Moses was a prince. He became an outcast shepherding sheep in the desert in his second. In the last third, he was the deliverer of Israel from bondage and God’s lawgiver.

He knew life was a slippery eel. You think you get your hands on it, and it slips through your fingers like sand. He instructed:

“So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” (Psalm 90:12, ESV)

It brings us back to our original question, “how do you measure a year?”

Here are some better ways than crossing days off of a calendar.

Are you loved, and did you love?

What counts in life is always relationships. It is the first thing that happens at birth when a mother cuddles a wrinkled newborn struggling to cry. It is the last thing at death when someone whispers, “I love you.”

Who do you love? How do you show it? Don’t waste time. Get busy expressing it in both words and actions,.

The boomerang of that is that you will find others love you.

Measure your year by the love you show and receive.

Did you serve unselfishly and quietly?

Some people love the spotlight. They will run to its beam and tell you the good they have done. Jesus did not care about their self-importance. At the judgment, Jesus said some remind him of all the good works done (Matthew 7:22-23).

Yet, the best service seeks not itself but the good of others.

What good do you do that no one knows? Those people hear the “well done” at the end.

Let the end of 2023 reveal the quiet ways you have served.

Was your world better because you were in it?

We occupy space on the planet. How is the world better because you have lived?

One of my favorite holiday movies is Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. George Bailey, played by Jimmy Stewart, becomes convinced the world would be better if he had not been born. Through the help of an angel-in-training, he discovers it is not valid.

We are here for a reason. How is the work better because you are here?

So, as the ball drops in Times Square, stop to “measure your year.” And remember, it is not the amount of days in a life but how much life is put into the days.