Time's winged chariot

My column for Friday, July 27, is about time's winged chariot, about the ticking of the clock on the wall and how we approach our inevitable mortality. My mom turns 90 in October and my wife turns 50 in November.
Which, to hear the Old Testament tell it, is a mere drop in the bucket. Back in the day, people lived centuries, Scripture tells us. Adam, the original ne'er-do-well, 930 years. Noah didn't go to that big dry dock in the sky until he was 950. And the all-time champion geezer, of course, was Methuselah, who didn't kick the bucket until he was 969 years old.
And all of this, apparently, without enlarged prostates.
Those were the days, huh?
This is one of thoses places in Scripture that you don't want to take literally. And don't give me that "years were reckoned differently in the olden times'' stuff. Lunar calendar or not, the ancients could figure out about how long a year lasted.
The idea, when Genesis was written, was to show a kind of theological truth: that God blessed the righteous with longevity, and that there were spiritual giants in those days, not like the "three score and ten'' losers around today.
Of course, there's a flaw in this system. Children die, and miserable old coots can hang on a good long time, so there is not a one-to-one correlation between goodness and old age.
Better just to consider every year, every day, a gift from God and go where the days and years carry you, even as you move your own way in the world.