Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near when you will say, ‘I have no delight in them.’ (Ecclesiastes 12:1)
This weekend Cindi and I will be in Okeechobee at my 45th high school class reunion; that’s right, 45th. It seems incomprehensible to me that 45 years have passed since high school; cruising down 441 listening to The Eagles telling us to, “Take it Easy.” When you’re young, time seems to move very slowly. When you’re older, time flies, and you’re the one moving very slowly. As someone has said, “Getting old ain’t for wimps.”
In the passage above, Solomon, the author of Ecclesiastes and a very wise man, (except where it came to women) reminds us of the importance of living for God while you’ve still got lots of living to do. Solomon is not saying that we can’t live for God when we’re older; certainly we should. He’s simply saying that life moves faster than a toupee in a hurricane; one minute you think you’ve got a grasp on it and the next minute, well, you get the picture.
Solomon also isn’t saying that we can’t find enjoyment in our latter years; certainly we can. I played golf on Wednesday with Ralph Johnson. He’s 88 and still enjoying life and living for Jesus! But, what Solomon is saying, and anyone that’s lived at least half a century can attest to, is that the older you get, the harder it gets. In most cases, pants size, blood pressure, hairlines, and pill counts all go up, and muscles, stamina, hearing, and eyesight all go down.
The 70’s rock group, KANSAS, famously sang: “Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind.” (Sorry, it’s probably the class-reunion causing the musical throwback references.) That sentiment is more theologically correct than the boys from Topeka probably knew. We’re here today and who knows about tomorrow? Some, who were with us for the 40th reunion, just 5 years ago, aren’t with us any longer.
My favorite quote from my favorite author, A.W. Tozer, goes like this: “Life is a short and fevered rehearsal for a concert we cannot stay to give. Just when we appear to have attained some proficiency, we are forced to lay our instruments down.” (A.W. Tozer)
This weekend we may be, as the Blues Brothers said, “getting the band back together,” but the reality is, none of us are sticking around for an encore. That’s what makes Solomon’s God-inspired advice so important and relevant.
Unless you can make a time machine out of a DeLorean none of us can do anything about our past. But, we can take Solomon’s council and we can run with today; run as fast as we can, as long as we can, until we kick the can. You and I can remember our Creator; young, old, or anywhere in-between. We can live for Him all the days of our lives; from this day forward.
If we do, then we can look forward to a reunion someday where we won’t just spend a weekend reminiscing about dancing to Sweet Home Alabama at the homecoming dance, but we’ll spend an eternity rejoicing in the fact that our God loved us so much that He would rather die than live without us. So, He did, and we get Sweet Home Heaven because of Him. Now, that’s something we can all dance to.
I love being your Pastor,
PC