A Very Timely Message, part 1

I’d like us to focus on the subject of time this week. That’s why I believe this will be a very timely message. This particular study is not so much about time management as it is life management. 

Psalm 90:12 “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” The Psalmist’s prayer here is that God would instruct us to evaluate our days properly. That God would help us to understand the rapidity with which they pass away, how few we actually have compared to eternity, and the certainty that they must soon come to an end. (I would imagine that almost every person dies before they thought they would.)
 

Many years ago, there was a comedian named Sam Kinison. Sam was born in Yakima, Washington. His parents were Pentecostal preachers who preached in different churches around the country. Sam followed in his dad’s footsteps and became a Pentecostal preacher himself after attending Bible School in New York. His sermons were the old “fire and brimstone” style.

But after Sam and his wife divorced, he gave up the ministry and got involved in comedy. His comedy style wasn’t unlike his preaching, and featured screams and yelling. His reputation became that of a hard-drinking, loud-mouthed, wild man. His routines most often involved screaming about the hypocrisy of television evangelists, with no subject being off limits. He quickly became the up-and-coming comedian in California. With his successful career, Kinison got involved in heavy cocaine use, as well as alcohol and other drugs.

On Friday, April 10, 1992, about 7:30 pm, Kinison and his third wife, whom he had married only a week earlier, were driving in a Pontiac Trans-am from Los Angeles to Laughlin, Nevada, where he was going to perform before a sold out audience. On the way there, a 17-year-old boy, who was driving drunk, hit Sam’s car head on resulting in a tremendous crash followed. 

Sam’s brother and a friend, Carl LaBove, had been following them in a van. After the accident, Carl was holding Sam’s head in his hands. At first it looked like there were no serious injuries to Kinison, but within minutes he suddenly said, to no one in particular, “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.” LaBove later said, “It was as if he was having a conversation, talking to some unseen somebody else,” some unseen person. Kinison died at the scene from internal injuries. He was just thirty-eight years old. 
 

I remember this account because it was well known that Sam was a backslidden Pentecostal preacher’s son who had sold out to the world. He had everything going for him, from a worldly perspective. He had fame, fortune, and youth. I heard another account that said after the accident Sam was out of the car, in a daze, saying, “It can’t happen this way, I can’t die like this.” 

Psalm 90:12 “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” “That we may gain a heart of wisdom….” In other words, teach us to properly evaluate our days, so that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Continued tomorrow