Have you heard Brahms's Requiem?  Based on words from Psalm 90, Requiem is surely one of the most powerful pieces of music Brahms composed.  It is a profound reminder of our humanness, our fragility, our mortality.  "Teach us, Lord," it says, "to number our days so that we will develop a heart of wisdom."
     The Requiem also uses a line from Isaiah 40, "All flesh is grass."  How can we not agree?  We are indeed "grass," here today, gone tomorrow, and we surely do well to watch our days closely, as they are the only days we will ever have on this planet.
     Reams have been written about whether  Brahms believed in the worldview behind these words, but that's not the point.  Our lives are gifts, gifts not of an unconscious and impersonal universe, lives that therefore mean absolutely nothing, but rather gifts of a purposeful God, lives that therefore mean everything.
     As we remember Brahms's birthday from last month, we might also ponder this point of his legacy, that in his Requiem we see the richest wisdom of all.