A few years ago an Indian holy man nearly incited a riot by failing to die as foretold. He’d predicted that his soul would leave his body sometime on the morning of November 17, and fifteen thousand people showed up to watch it happen. The crowd fell silent as he sat down to meditate but turned violent when he was still alive at noon, believing they’d been cheated out of a religious experience. It required a police baton-charge to disperse them. The holy man was quite apologetic: ‘I wanted to leave my mortal body,’ he said, ‘but I could not. Please forgive me.’
It goes to show that the Bible is right when it says, “Our times are in God’s hands.” And the prayer we should be offering is that one from the Bible that says: ‘Teach us to number our days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom.’