Daily Devotion

“The Scottish missionary John Chalmers (1825-1899) served with the London Missionary Society in late Qing China as a preacher, writer and translator. His English and Cantonese Pocket Dictionary (1859) made the term "Cantonese" current in English, and in 1868 he published in London the first English translation of the Tao Te Ching. In The Origin of the Chinese he pointed out that in the Book of Poetry and the Book of History, Shangti and Ti occur more than eighty times with the meaning of God, "that is, of One Supreme Deity."”

Wikipedia · Wikipedia, "John Chalmers (missionary)"; John Chalmers, The Origin of the Chinese

Scripture

Psalm 90:12 Teach us how to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Reflection

We are often adept at calculating earthly gains and losses: how much wealth we've accumulated, how many schedules we've planned, yet we often neglect the countdown to the end of our lives. Moses reminds us in the Psalms that true wisdom lies not in being skilled at worldly calculations, but in knowing how to count the blessings of our Heavenly Father and the days of our lives. When we turn our gaze from fleeting material possessions to eternal salvation, our hearts are no longer bound by earthly anxieties, and we gain the peace and serenity that comes from God.