Kyra Karr
“So
teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom,”
prayed the psalmist (Psalm 90:12, NASB).
How, exactly, do
you go about numbering your days? Is it even possible, when you don’t know how
long you will live? The psalmist had some thoughts on that, too: “As for the
days of our life, they contain seventy years, or if due to
strength, eighty years, yet their pride is but labor and sorrow;
for soon it is gone and we fly away.” (Psalm 90:10).
Soon and very
soon. The average life expectancy for Americans is 78.8 years (81.2 for women,
76.4 for men), according to a 2014 report from the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. The 10 leading
causes of death are heart disease, cancer, respiratory diseases, stroke,
unintentional injuries, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, influenza and
pneumonia, kidney disease and suicide.
In truth, the
leading cause of death is mortality. It awaits us all, even 18-year-old dudes
who think they will live forever. Sorry, dudes, but insurance actuarial tables
beg to differ.
Suppose you live
to 90. Sounds like forever — until you pass the halfway point of getting there.
I’m well past that halfway point, so this topic holds significant interest for
me. But even if you’re a kid with “forever” in front of you, “numbering your
days” is a useful exercise if you want to use them to serve God.
How will you spend
them? Consider well; God is observing your choices. “Therefore be careful how
you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because
the days are evil,” the Apostle Paul advised (Ephesians 5:15-16, NASB). You can
spend them loving God and following Him, or you can spend them on yourself.
In these days of
medical advance, your life might contain many more than 90 years. Or far fewer.
Kyra Karr,
age 30, a missionary, wife and mother of three young daughters, died in a traffic
accident Aug. 13 in her home state of Georgia. She didn’t have the opportunity
to return to Rome, Italy, where she and her husband, Reid, began serving after
their appointment in 2009.
This young woman
had been sharing the gospel with others since she was a teenager. She had
“found her groove as a mom raising her kids in Italy,” according to a
missionary colleague. She was ministering to children through the church,
helping new missionaries learn the language and mobilizing Christians in Rome
to help women victimized by sex trafficking.
“Kyra was the
aroma of Christ in Rome. We sensed it. We breathed it. We were blessed by it,”
said her pastor in Rome, Leonardo De Chirico. “Kyra was a glimpse of what it
means to be absorbed in Christ.”
“I think her life
would encourage anyone considering missions to go all out, to not waste time,
to pursue it because we don’t have a promise of tomorrow,” said another
missionary.
No one is promised
tomorrow. Shakespeare grappled with that reality in his sonnets, which are
essentially meditations on time, death and love. Which is stronger? “Love’s not
Time’s fool,” he wrote in Sonnet 116. “Love alters not with his brief hours and
weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom.”
Perhaps Kyra’s
Karr’s hours and weeks were brief. But she numbered her days well.
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