5 Fives Friday

 

The years of our life are seventy,

or even by reason of strength eighty;
yet their span is but toil and trouble;
they are soon gone, and we fly away.

Who considers the power of your anger,
and your wrath according to the fear of you?

 

So teach us to number our days
that we may get a heart of wisdom.

Return, O Lord! How long?
Have pity on your servants!
Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,
that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

(Psalm 90:10-14 ESV)

Five is not a magical number. It is mentioned in Scripture mostly to mark the amount or age of someone...like sixty-five. For some reason we are fascinated by numbers. People will say certain numbers have biblical significance, and they are correct because certain numbers are repetitive in the history of Israel and even into the New Testament. Twelve tribes, twelve disciples, you get the idea.

But five is not like that. It's an odd number. However, I like the sound of "5 Fives Friday" and I do have a practical point to my rambling if you can bear with me.

Last week, I was running at a local park, and I was getting tired of running, so I started a cadence count in my head: "1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4...etc." That motivational counting soon became boring, so I added a 5. "1-2-3-4-

5... POW!

I got a little surge of power, so I kept counting to five and I kept running and I finished my workout. Cool!

While counting my thoughts lighted onto another idea for getting my to-do list done. Why not list 5 Fives each day and see how much I accomplish on the list? Then I trimmed my goal back to why not just do it once a week and work my way up to 5 days a week. So I have been listing my 5 Fives at least once a week now for the past week. And it works. One time I even listed a sixth 5.

So here's the challenge: Make a List a of 5 Fives and Do Them! Feel free to comment on this post to let us know how it goes.

Here's my list for today:

1. Read 5 pages in the Bible.
2. Drink 5 glasses of water.
3. Take 5 minutes to unload the dishwasher.
4. List 5 gratitudes.
5. Count to 5 before I answer a question. (Remember counting engages the rational side of our brains!)

High five! See you next week.