Remember Your Creator

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

There is a time to be born and a time to die. We’ve seen that in Ecclesiastes chapter 3. There’s a time to be born and a time to die. And every minute in between that, you just get older. You’re born, you die. The whole process is one where you age. And some age less or more gracefully than others. Solomon started exhorting young people in particular to bask in life and to rejoice in their youth at the end of chapter 11, which we’ve looked at the previous few Sundays. It’s a sober call, at least starting in chapter 11 verse 7 and then especially in verse 9 with rejoice, oh young man in your youth. That’s a sober call to take your enjoyment of youth and the days of your youth seriously.

It’s a call to play for keeps. Young people are to rejoice in their youth while remembering coming judgment and removing any obstacle to their ability to enjoy the days of their youth. And as we move into this final chapter of Ecclesiastes, it’s hard to believe in and of itself, but as we move into this final chapter of Ecclesiastes, the preacher Solomon is bringing his message to a close, and in today’s paragraph he addresses again the young and emphasizes a very practical reason for why you should bask in your youth. you should rejoice in the days of your youth and that’s because it doesn’t last forever. It lasts for a very brief period of time and then literally things start falling apart.

In Ecclesiastes 12, 1-8 Solomon summons us to enjoy youth before it’s gone and summarizes the vanity of what Doug Wilson calls geezer time. I laughed out loud when I read that. The vanity of geezer time, of getting old and all the problems associated with that. So two parts. A summons to embrace youth and a summary on earthly vanity. A summons to embrace youth is found in verses 1 through 7. The first part of this paragraph appeals for embracing youth and then argues why that is so important. The appeal doesn’t take very long, it’s just the first part of verse 1. As he did in chapter 11 verses 9 and 10, Solomon calls for the wise use of youth. Look at chapter 12, we’ll read the whole paragraph and come back and go through it.

Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, I have no pleasure in them. Before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened, and the clouds return after the rain. In the day when the keepers of the house tremble and the strong men are bent and the grinders cease because they are few, and those who look through the windows are dimmed. And the doors of the street are shut, when the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low. They are also afraid of what is high, and terrors are in the way. The almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along, and desire fails, because man is going to his eternal home, and the mourners go about the streets, before the silver cord is snapped, or the golden bull is broken, or the pitcher is shattered at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the Spirit returns to God who gave it.

Vanity of vanities, says the preacher. All is vanity. And as I said, he begins at the first part of verse 1 with an appeal, and it’s an appeal to embrace youth, to enjoy your life, especially in the days of your youth, as an amazing opportunity that God gives you. Remember also your creator in the days of your youth. Now the command remember was used a couple times at the end of chapter 11 and the idea of remembering certain things was to function as kind of a governing principle. It’s something you’re You’re supposed to keep in mind something you’re supposed to be conscious of, and as you’re conscious of this truth, it’s supposed to change what you do.

It does so here as well in chapter 12 verse 1, but I don’t think, in chapter 12 verse 1, he’s saying, remember your Creator in the days of your youth.

I don’t think he’s talking about remember here as remember judgment, but remember to to enjoy. And I will try to explain why I think that’s the case. The appeal is to remember also your Creator in the days of your youth. Now, two things lead me to think that this is more about enjoyment and less about judgment. Clearly at the end of chapter 11 he was saying, remember coming judgment. Now he’s talking about remembering something else. The first reason why I don’t think it’s about remembering judgment is because of the reference to God God as creator. That’s an odd reference for this point in the book, especially if he’s going to talk about judgment. Solomon could have just as easily said, remember also your Lord in the days of your youth. He could have just as easily said, remember also your judge in the days of your youth. He could have even said, remember also your Redeemer, or some other title or name for God that would have emphasized sin, that would have emphasized God’s sovereignty in the sense of ownership and judgment. But instead he emphasizes by

calling attention to God as creator, he highlights that we have life. Hopefully that’s not too too obvious. If you have a Creator, that means you have life. We have been given life and we should live life like we’re alive. Is that too simple? You have been given life by a Creator, so live it like you are alive. Life is good. Just as we saw in Chapter 11, Verse life is good, it’s good to bask in life. God gave us life and so we shouldn’t hide our life under the bushel basket of boredom or of a bad attitude or of excessive snooze buttoning. Don’t hide your life under the bushel basket. No, I’m gonna let it live. If we were to at least parallel it with the song about not hiding our light under a basket. Some has told us multiple times already even though life under the Sun is filled with vanity. Yes, there is no doubt there are a lot of frustrations that are a part of living life on this planet. While life under the sun is filled with vanity, it is also filled with opportunity. Once you are dead, no more opportunity.

That is why dead is the opposite of life. So once you’re dead, you don’t have life, which means you don’t have the opportunity to live like you’re alive when you’re dead. That’s gone. So enjoy life now. It may be a hamster wheel. The vanity of life on the sun may be a hamster wheel. So run, Forrest. Run on your hamster wheel. Feel the wind that The rungs of the wheel at least are producing around you. Enjoy the sounds of the wheel grinding underneath your feet. There is no big hamster wheel in the sky that you’re going to. So you either enjoy it now, or you’ve wasted it. You aren’t going to be tired when you’re dead.

We’re always whining about how tired we are. Okay, you’re not going to be tired forever because you’re going to die. So your experience of being tired and what that feels like, this is it. You maybe have 70-ish years to know and to embrace the feeling of being tired. That’s all you get. Out of eternity, you get like maybe 70 years to know what that feels like. Live it. Love it. Own it.

take a nap if you need to, but like, that’s what we get. And that’s an opportunity that we are to embrace, not that we are to complain and whine about and try to get out of. So I think that by emphasizing God as creator, He’s calling us, He’s appealing to us to embrace the opportunities of youth because we’re alive. So enjoy life while you have life and especially in the days of your youth. That’s one reason by emphasizing God as creator, I don’t think he’s calling us to remember coming judgment. He’s remembering, he’s calling us to remember that God has given us breath. We should enjoy each one. But the second reason why why I think this is more about enjoyment and opportunity is because of the argument that goes on from the second part of verse 1 all the way through verse 7. Based on Solomon’s argument here, there’s just nothing about judgment in the picture. It’s about why you should really maximize life and opportunity while you’re young because you don’t get to have all of the opportunities in your life even that you do when you’re young. So the

argument just doesn’t make sense if the appeal is just a repeat reminder to remember coming judgment. So let’s get into the argument from verse 1b through verse 7. The appeal is the beginning of verse 1, the argument verse 1b through 7, the second half of verse 1. The The reason why we are supposed to make the most of life, and especially of the days of our youth, is because every second that ticks by on the clock brings with it aging. Now, I have turned off… I have the choice on my computer on the status bar. I can choose to have it display the hour, the minute, and the seconds, or to just have it show the hour and the minutes.

I’ve turned off the seconds because anytime I get stuck just looking at the seconds, I start thinking, whoa. On the Snow Retreat website, the last couple years I’ve been putting up a counter that’s counting down to the registration check-in time for Snow Retreat at 10am on Monday morning. I can’t look at that site very often because I see those seconds like they always keep moving. They don’t stop. They just keep going. It’s not like one is longer or shorter. It’s just like clockwork. Those seconds are consistent. And so I have to turn off the second thing. I’m going to stop looking at the clock right now as well.

The point is that when you do stop and consider those things, you realize that life is really brief. And not only do you realize that life is brief, you realize that your body is frail and the longer you go and the less well your body is working, then you die. So those are really fantastic things to be thinking about. So Solomon is arguing that we bask in youth before our body starts breaking down and you have to wear one of those medical necklaces And all it says is out of order because you’re going to get to a point where that’s about as good as your body is. It’s just out of order. It’s not working anymore. Move on.

Go someplace else. The argument is filled with at least a number of things that old age brings. And this is a really cheery message, but it’s Solomon’s argument and it is important and it’s addressed to young people. This is not addressed to old people for whom it’s too late. It’s addressed to young people so they’d get it now so that they wouldn’t waste their youth for when they get to old age. So a few things that old age leads to, like old age leads to discouragement.

There are multiple parts of this argument that getting older is no good and it begins with just a general description of the discouragement that is typically associated with the elderly and older people. He says, chapter 12 verse 1, Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, I have no pleasure in them. Before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return after the rain. You have got to enjoy and embrace life and youth now before the evil days come. That’s a psychological description. It impacts your psyche, your mentality, your attitude about life is described here in the last part of verse 1 and verse 2. It’s discouraging when you’re old. Evil days refer to bad days, days when things aren’t working well or going well, and those evil days fill up years. And the years then draw near of which you will say, I have no pleasure in them. You get to the point where it’s tough to find things to be positive about. You’re too weak to make

your own fun and you’re too cranky to excite other people to come in and help you have fun. So you are old and weak and alone and cranky and negative and that doesn’t make people think, oh wow, let’s go hang out with old cranky pants today. Really try to cheer them up. Someone has turned off all the lights and you’ve been left in the dark. That’s exactly how you feel. At least I think that Solomon is describing. That’s exactly what old age feels like. You’re in the room, somebody turned the lights off, and then you’re all by yourself. He says that as much in verse 2, the sun and the light and the moon and stars are darkened. And in the Old Testament, the light-dark contrast is meant to describe, light always refers to things that are prosperous and happy and joyful and good. And darkness is always something that represents calamity and tragedy and things that are no good. And Now the light of life, so to speak, has gone out.

And that’s why back in chapter 11 verse 7 when it says, light is sweet and it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun, now as you get older your light dims. And there’s less enjoyment of life. That’s not all because the clouds return after the rain. Now normally that’s not how it’s supposed to happen. the clouds come and then the rain. So either the clouds come before the rain or the clouds and the rain come together, but after the clouds and the rain, what’s supposed to happen?

Then you’re supposed to get the sunshine, not here. Oh, there’s no more sun now, because after it rains, clouds. I thought once it rained, the clouds would leave. No. After rain you get more clouds. People are not typically depressed by the rain, they’re depressed by the darkness of the clouds hiding the sun. And so here what we have is light is leaving, diminishing, dimming in old age and it’s not very happy. Old age is dark and stormy. It’s kind of like the very end of fall right before winter when the trees that were pretty from the changing colors of the leaves are now empty because the leaves have blown away. And what was kind of pretty is now actually starting to get kind of ugly.

And whereas at the beginning of fall, you know, we kind of like fall because then we can wear our favorite sweater again. It’s finally chilly enough that we can put on our nice light jacket or a nice sweater. But now it’s starting to get too cold to even go outside when you’ve got a coat on. Now add to that, spring is never coming and you just wasted your previous spring and summer And that’s it. We think about the seasons. We assume. We’re still assuming now into May. We’re still assuming that spring is supposed to arrive. What if it doesn’t? What if it doesn’t come? You realize with age, spring doesn’t come again.

You’ve got one spring and summer, one beginning of fall, and then the dead of winter. You’ve got one go around at this hamster wheel, getting old is discouraging. His argument continues in verses 3 and 4. Old age leads to deterioration or decay or demolition of your body. Now I would have thought that he would have just as well moved on. I think the argument was already strong enough. We get it. It’s discouraging. But he actually presses it even more specific verses 3 and 4, In the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the grinder cease, because they are few, and those who look through the windows are dimmed, and the doors on the street are shut, when the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low.

Now, the word body is not found in those verses. In fact, when you just kind of read it on the surface, surface, it sounds like Solomon is describing a house or rather a large estate, maybe even a palace because what you have here are some different classes of people doing different things, its entire groups of people, not just one person in a house. Keepers of the house were probably servants, strong men, maybe are those who provide security. The grinders would have been some of the servant ladies who would have ground flour so that they could bake and otherwise make food. And then those who were the window lookers looking out the windows were probably women of leisure with nothing better to do than stare out the window.

So you’ve got men and women, you’ve got probably upper class and lower class to some degree. multiple people part of this large estate running this large household, but it makes no sense if Solomon is actually talking about a real house. It doesn’t work for the sake of interpretation. To conclude, he’s talking about an actual real estate that’s deteriorating that adds nothing to the argument of why you should embrace your youth, remember your creator because people in the house stop working and are just staring into the outside. Yeah, I better get too busy on my youth. No, that adds nothing to the argument, but even more than that, why would fewer women grinding lead to the stopping of grinding altogether?

If you had less women who were working, wouldn’t that actually need to increase how much they worked? It doesn’t decrease the amount of work that needs to be done. It needs to decrease the amount of workers. Well then they would have to work more, not actually stop. Not to mention the fact, wouldn’t those looking through actual windows, wouldn’t they get more light, not less? If you are looking through a window that makes your vision more dim than it was before you’re looking through the window, there’s something wrong with the window. Even just the interpretation of itself doesn’t make sense to see this as an actual house.

The only proper interpretation is to see these descriptions as figurative for various parts of the human body, which go in to strengthen the argument for enjoying youth before it’s gone. Let’s run through this catalog of parts of you that are deteriorating and decaying and ultimately not going to work very well at some point in time here for some of us, the near future. Some maybe have a little bit longer to go, but for example, before the day when the keepers of the house tremble, this is more than likely a description of the the arms, maybe even the arms and the hands, because the arms and the hands protect. They keep the house. They make it so, like they keep your body. They enable you to fend off and to get good. But as you get older, hands start to get weak, your arms start to shake.

You can no longer open your own jar of pickles. You got to get somebody else to do that for you can’t keep your hands steady. One of the medical terms for that is palsy, which is a paralysis that’s accompanied by involuntary tremors shaking. So the keepers of the house tremble, not only that, and the strong men are bent. That’s also probably a reference to the legs, maybe even the lower back and legs. You can’t straighten out in strength anymore, you’re hunched over, you’re bent, can’t stand up straight. Not only that but the grinders cease because they are few. The grinders obviously is a reference to your teeth, your teeth rot and then they fall out and they don’t work anymore. And you had to know, maybe you weren’t thinking about it but it’ll make sense now, you had to know that at some point in time, Solomon had to address the vanity of dentistry.

Because there is potentially no other issue under the sun that is more vain and empty and meaningless than dentistry. And the amount of time and energy and effort we put into keeping the grinders white and pretty and straight and thousands of dollars some of you are wearing in your mouth right now to keep these grinders. But I have nothing against, you know, braces. Braces are great. It will be fantastic when you get old and your straight teeth rot and fall out. Awesome for you. And maybe if you can get every other one to fall out, that’ll be like a nice little design in your mouth. I mean, truly, if crooked teeth fall out, people are like, eh, they’re crooked anyway, but when straight ones fall out, well then, well, that’s sad.

The point is, chew your steak now before with every bite of steak it pulls your dentures out and you need to buy the super maximum extra strength poly grip that holds your dentures onto your gums just so you can chew your tapioca pudding. Use them now. Those who look through the windows are dim. That’s referring to loss of sight. And yes, you can get glasses and then you’ll get bifocals and then you’ll get trifocals and then you’ll get a seeing-eye dog who can help you when it’s all gone. That happens as you get older. You can have the LASIK eye surgery if you want. If you want really people putting lasers on your eyes, go for it.

I don’t want people putting drops in my eyes, let alone taking a laser to it and forcing my face open so that they can get those lasers at a better angle onto my eyes. That’s not for me, maybe that’s for you. That will last for a while. As you get older, they’ll stop working. Then Oliver 4 describes the various and ironic problems of hearing loss. The doors on the street are shut. Something starts blocking the ability to hear. The doors are shut. Even in Hebrew, the word doors is in a dual form, so it’s talking about something that’s two. And so that is very likely then referring to the ears.

And the noise of the outside world then is cut off, like when you shut a door and you at least can hear less that’s happening on the other side of the door. The sound of the grinding is low. If you can imagine what it’s like to take some heavy object, some maybe piece of rock and pound that on another piece of rock to grind the flower, that’s not a really quiet process. And so as you get older and the doors are shut, the grinding starts to get lower. You can’t hear it as well as you could. While that’s true, it’s ironic that a bird tweeting in the morning is going to wake you up. The older you get, for a lot of people at least, the more restless they get. And so while they can’t hear as good, they can also at the wrong times apparently hear better because one rises up at the sound of a bird. And then the daughters of song are brought low. That’s kind of a weird phrase. I assume that that’s probably talking about music, some kind of entertainment, even something that you would have generally enjoyed when you were younger. But after you have

pumped the 800 decibels through your iPod earbuds and have started the door shutting earlier, there will come a point in time when you’re a grandma and you’ll be begging your grandkids to turn the volume up on the TV because you can’t hear it. And so the enjoyment is less, the hearing is less, everything is falling apart. And Solomon doesn’t even include things like the sagging parts or the wrinkles or the sunspots or the varicose veins. This This is a house that is beyond remodeling, okay? There is no extreme home makeover that’s going to be able to fix this one, okay? Which is not a huge surprise when it leads to the next part of the argument that old age leads to despair.

The first part of verse 5, the older you get, the less eager you are to go out because you’re more afraid. Beginning with verse 5, they are afraid also of what is high and terrors are in the way. The they must be referring to this personified old person or to a group of elderly people and they are afraid also of what is high. Heights make them nervous. Now, this is what Solomon says under divine inspiration, so I’m going to go with that. I’m not familiar of a lot of medical studies being done about the connection of age and fear of heights. I suppose you don’t see a lot of 80-year-olds riding roller coasters. Maybe that’s part of the reason why they’re not as eager for using stepladders or cleaning their gutters, I don’t know.

Some of them are prepared by having the little thing, you know, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up. Maybe they go up higher, I’m not sure. I really like, what would it have been like? What was life in Israel like at this point that caused Solomon to choose this one to mention people when they get old don’t like to go up high. Was there like a national trauma of no old people putting roofs on their houses or what was obvious to Solomon about this problem I have no idea. But he mentions it there’s a fear of being unsteady and falling And of course, if you do fall, you’re less likely to recover. And so they’re also concerned that terrors are in the way.

They don’t want to leave the house. Either because they can’t leave the house because so much of their body isn’t working, or they’re just afraid to leave the house for fear that something bad would happen. They’re not even going to leave the house on their little mobilized scooter thingy to get around because they’re nervous that something bad could happen. So old age leads to discouragement, leads to deterioration, leads to despair, to fear, also leads to more decline. At the last part of verse 5 it gives even more descriptions about some of the problems with aging. The almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along and desire fails. Now the almond tree blossoms, that’s typically you can get pink blossoms or white blossoms and white blossoms were probably more familiar to Solomon and so what he’s saying is you can identify someone’s age not by cutting them open and seeing how many grow rings are inside but all you have to do is look at the top of their head.

If it’s white, in most cases that goes with number of years on the planet. In Proverbs, white hair was a sign of wisdom. There’s something to appreciate and to value about hair, if you even get to keep your hair as you get old anyway. But Proverbs has some positive things about white hair and wisdom. There is no almond joy of the blossoms and the white on the head bringing with it wisdom in this passage, all that means here is you’re just old and everybody knows you’re old because you’re displaying it on your head. The grasshopper drags itself along more than likely is a reference to, I don’t know how old grasshoppers get, but a grasshopper who has lost its spring.

There’s no jumping from place to place anymore. The grasshopper is dragging itself along. I was at Starbucks yesterday and I was watching various people walk into the store and there are people who walk faster and there are people who kind of lumber along not picking their feet really far up off the ground. Once I moved from their feet to their head there was often a correlation between more white on the head with more slow of the feet so the grasshopper drags itself along and desire fails. I think the New American Standard actually translates this, and the caperberry is ineffective. What the caperberry would have been was a 3,000 year old version of Viagra related to trying to stimulate someone’s sexual desire.

The ESV says desire fails. Is a god to so many people for so long? That doesn’t even work anymore. There’s nothing they can do about it. And so the caperberry is ineffective, desire fails, it doesn’t work, you’re too old. Which leads to the last part of the argument, which is old age leads to death. Not to springtime and the sun coming out again after the rain. Once you’ve started the process, you can’t get out of it and its end is death. Man is going to his eternal home. The mourners go about in the streets before the silver cord is snapped or the golden bold is broken or the pitcher is shattered at the fountain or the wheel broken at the cistern and the dust returns to the earth as it was and the spear returns to God who gave it.

Man is going to his eternal home and that means that once your opportunity here is gone it’s really gone. There are not second chances. is probably not in his mind thinking about heaven or hell as the two options for the eternal home. We would know that from other parts of scripture. His point is that you are going to die. It’s interesting that even the verb is going is a continuous thing, emphasizing this process like the second hand around the clock continues and is ongoing. You are going. All of you right now are going to. You’re on your way to your eternal home. No going back. And that’s sad. So mourners go about in the streets weeping and singing their sad songs now that you’re gone. But just because mourners are sad that you’re gone does not make your life significant if you wasted it while you had the opportunity.

No amount of party of sadness can make up for your wasted life. Verse 6 then uses two illustrations to describe the finality and the irreversibility of death. In both cases, something very valuable is destroyed. Now I think these two illustrations go together. So there’s actually four things, but I think the first two are connected and the second two are connected. I’ll just explain this quickly. The silver cord is snapped. The ESV at least has, or the golden bowl is broken, probably should be, and the golden bowl is broken. Probably go together. So maybe you have a bowl being held up by a cord, and the cord snaps, and what happens to the bowl? The bowl falls and breaks.

The last two parts as well I think go together. The pitcher is shattered at the fountain and the wheel broken at the cistern, meaning you’ve got a A pitcher or a jar that is controlled by some crank or pulley system or wheel, and when the wheel breaks, the pitcher or the jar falls to the bottom of the well and shatters, and it’s no good anymore. You can’t use it. Once Humpty Dumpty gets old, in this case, and falls down, there is no one to put him back together again. It’s final. irreversible. Now the first half of verse 7 finishes the reference back to creation. Remember, remember your Creator in the days of your youth. And the first part of verse 7, and the dust returns to the earth as it was, is totally a reference to Adam, who in Genesis chapter 2 verse 7, Adam was formed out of the dust. And in Genesis chapter 3 verse 19, the curse was, or part of the curse was, that because of sin which brought death, Adam’s body would return back to the earth to dust.

From dust to dust. You either are going to enjoy it while your dust has life and breath in it, or you will have wasted your life from dust back to dust. But the part that is eternal, the Spirit goes on to God forever. And this is a picturesque and powerful argument for Solomon’s summons to live it up and to enjoy your youth, to enjoy life and bask in it while you have it. Because you’re not going to have it that long. And it’s not going to work very well for as long as you do have it. So finally then, verse 8 is the summary on earthly vanity. We’ve seen verse 8 before. Vanity of vanities says the preacher all is vanity. Verse 8 is not only a summary of this paragraph, it’s the other bookend. It’s the back bookend to chapter 1 verse 2, which says vanity of vanity says the preacher vanity of vanity is all is vanity. This one is a little shorter. It doesn’t have the repeated vanity of vanities, but it’s the exact same motto that we looked at back in May of 2005.

I remember in May of 2005 knowing that chapter 12 verse 8 was the second bookend and wondered if we would ever get there. Maybe you have wondered that as well. Chapter 12 verse 8 summarizes the paragraph, vanity of vanities, all is vanity, puts a nice little bow on your casket. Vanity of vanity is all is vanity, but it also summarizes the whole thing that has come before in all of Ecclesiastes. As you should remember, the expression vanity of vanities is a superlative exclamation, just like Lord of lords means the top lord. King of kings, best king, holy of holies is the most holy. Life under the sun is ultimate vanity. Vanity of vanities, habel, habelim, hakol, habel. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

And I am hoping that now at the end of Ecclesiastes, you feel the weightiness of that motto more than you did at the beginning. And I am hoping that you are more crushed by that burden and are caused to look up to God than you were before. I hope that by talking about all the vanity in Ecclesiastes, you realize that life under the sun is so bitter unless you’re properly related to God. But the bookends beginning in the end here are all intended to get us to seek Him beyond the sun. From aging and death, fools, oppression, hurtful authority, uncertain future, failed ventures, cans of peaches with no can opener, the emptiness of money and relationships and entertainment and accomplishments and alcohol, and even the inability of wisdom itself to provide final and complete answers, all is vanity in the search for meaning under the sun. This is a book written by the wisest man ever.

He experimented with it all, he tried it, and he got old, and he is urging us, appealing to us, arguing for us to enjoy and to embrace life, especially in the days of our youth, or to take every advantage of the opportunity that God gives us while we have life in breath. It’s short, it’s frail, and for some people they don’t even get to have the years where their body deteriorates. They don’t even get to all of those good things about old age that we referred to. Some people would love to just have their only problem being that all their teeth fell out because they were old or that their head was gray if they could still be with their family and enjoy their kids or their wife or their opportunity to preach the gospel or whatever it is. Some people would love just to get to all of those ailments that come with aging, they don’t even get those years, which is an even greater argument for why we should remember also our Creator in the days of our youth.

Father, help us do that. It is so tempting to pursue life unto the Son and to seek satisfaction here, meaning in other people, gathering stuff, but real life, satisfaction to life, is only found in you. When we remember you as the giver of life, but you’re the reason we’re alive now and that even the aging process for as ugly and as uncomfortable as it may may be still is part of the process we can enjoy if we’re not trying to just hold on to our youth, but we’re enjoying life however you give it to us. This is a perspective we’re glad that Solomon instructs us about. It’s also an attitude though we need your spirit’s help to maintain, cause us to be a group of young, middle aged, old, wherever we’re at who remember you, who live in light of you, each and every second that ticks off the clock. We pray this in Christ’s name, Amen.