A Word in Season: Remember Your Creator (Ecclesiastes 12:6–7)

Remembering the Creator in Youth and Old Age

Ecclesiastes in chapter 12 begins with a forceful reminder about youth and age. Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth before the difficult days come. Youth is a time of strength and energy.

We may do almost anything we feel and it doesn't seem to have any impact upon us. But all too soon the time comes when, whereas before we might do a hard day's physical labour or engage in some sporting activity and the next day we just get on with the same sort of thing again, before long we'll wake up and open our eyes and try to move and realise that our eyeballs are the only muscles that don't hurt.

And as the years increase so our weakness and our frailty increases. And in this evocative and poetic language the preacher of Ecclesiastes talks about the decline of our physical health and strength, about how our eyes grow dim, our teeth wear down, things that before did not trouble us become fearful to us and burdensome to us.

And so he reminds us again in verse 6. Remember your Creator before the silver cord is loosed or the golden bowl is broken or the pitcher shattered at the fountain or the wheel broken at the well. Then the dust will return to the earth as it was and the Spirit of God will return to God who gave it.

It is good for all of us, whether we are younger or older, to remember our Creator. In the days of our youth, before the difficult days come, when we have strength and energy, humanly speaking, with which we can serve the Lord, not to waste those days when there is perhaps greater capacity, greater liberty to do some of the things that we want to do.

I know dear saints who, when I preach the privileges and the responsibilities and the opportunities and the duties of God's people, I have known one or two who have gone away weeping because they want to be able to do what they cannot now do as once they did.

I love the spirit of that heart. But nevertheless, they are remembering their Creator and they will, because of that, still be doing what they can. So let us not waste those days of strength and vitality.

Serving the Lord in the Seasons of Life

But let us not forget either that there are works to be done toward the end of life, that there are still seasons of opportunity and still great blessings that a seasoned saint can bring. But for the young and the old, we need to remember our Creator, perhaps even more so if we are not yet in His Kingdom, if we have not yet trusted in Christ to save us, if perhaps the vitality of youth is fading and the pains of old age are oncoming and we are neglectful of the fact that before long the silver cord will be loosed and the golden bowl broken, or the pitcher shattered at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the well, when the dust will return to the earth as it was and the Spirit will return to God who gave it.

All of us need to live in the day that God gives us and all of us need to live in the light of the day that is coming, when the dust will return to earth as it was. Those words of the funeral service, dust to dust, is the testimony that all of us will face at the end of our life.

It is short in the balance of things. If we have more than 70 years, it is a blessing of God. But soon the Spirit will return to God who gave it. For some that may be a moment of fearful realization and terrible judgment as they come before a God who either in youth or old age they have utterly neglected.

Death, Judgment, and Life in Christ

Or it may be a time of sweet realization and relief as we come into the presence of a God who has reconciled to us through the death of his Son Jesus Christ and the days of vitality that were long past and the days of perhaps pressure and pain that were our more recent memories are all swallowed up in a life that will never end in the presence of Jesus Christ with the prospect of the restoration of the body where the eyes and the teeth and the strength will never fail and we shall be able forever and forever to serve our Creator and our God.

So let us live while we have life for him. Let us remember our Creator while the opportunity is given and let us look forward because of Christ to being in his presence and serving him in the new heavens and the new earth.