“Fifteen days left!” That was a note on the fridge of a hard-working teacher, counting down until the end of her school year. My children, too, are doing a similar countdown.

How often do we want to make time go away? Caught in a traffic jam, we fume about how long it is taking us to arrive at our destination. In a doctor’s waiting room, we tap impatiently while awaiting our turn. Though our tapping and fuming doesn’t make the time go any faster, it expresses how we want to move on to “the more important stuff.”

We enthusiastically await life’s next milestones—the baby finally sleeping through the night, speaking her first words, walking his first steps, beginning that first day at school—only to wake up one day to an empty home, wondering where the time went.

We can’t wait to graduate, earn our degrees, and begin our first job. Then, we’re eager for the next, better job opportunity, until we find ourselves pondering when we will finally save enough to retire.

When recording the life of righteous people, like Abraham and Sarah, the Torah uses the phrase, “zekeinim, baim bayomim—they were old, they entered many days.” If they were old, isn’t it obvious that they lived many days? The wording implies, however, that living many days isn’t necessarily entering our days. We can drive away our time, looking for the next prospect, or we can live in the moment, entering each of our days by experiencing them fully.

The Jewish people had an unusual practice when they journeyed in the desert.

“Whether it was for two days, a month or a year, that the cloud lingered to hover over the Sanctuary, the children of Israel would encamp and not travel, and when it departed, they traveled. At the L‑rd’s bidding they would encamp, and at the L‑rd’s bidding they would travel.” (Numbers 9:22-23)

Sometimes, they camped for weeks at a location; other times they remained for just a day. At every location, the Levites assembled the Sanctuary, including the wall sections, pillars, tapestries, furnishing, and every one of its hundreds of foundation sockets. Several thousand Levites were needed for this formidable task.

Was it really necessary to assemble and disassemble the entire structure if they were to remain for only one day at a particular location?

Yes! Because every one of our “stations” in life is significant. At times, we may feel that we are just at a waiting point, at a stage before the next, more meaningful phase. But every day, every moment—somehow, even those caught at the long supermarket checkout line—can be entered into and transformed into an opportunity for growth.

At every juncture, we need to assemble our own Sanctuary by finding a way, at this moment, to join heaven and earth.