"Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth" (Eccl. 12:1).
As the years go by, our strength fails and old age tightens its grip. We grow weak, our minds become dull, we become more dependent, and we find little comfort in life. These are the days that need the comfort of true religion, not the pursuit of it. Mrs. Wesley advised her son to listen to the words of Ecclesiastes and remember the Lord: “Believe me, my dear son, old age is the worst time we can choose to mend either our lives or our fortunes. If the foundations of solid piety are not laid betimes in sound principles and virtuous dispositions; and if we neglect, while strength and vigour last, to lay up something ere the infirmities of old age overtake us—it is an hundred to one odds, that we shall die both poor and wicked.” Happily, her son heeded her advice, for in his dying moments he said, “In age and feebleness extreme, who shall a helpless worm redeem? Jesus: my only hope Thou art; Strength of my failing flesh and heart. O let me catch a smile from Thee, and drop into eternity.”
The prudent man prepares for the winter of life by storing up in the days of his youth. David was such a man who remembered the Lord in his youth, and when his health failed, God was his strength and his portion (Ps. 73:26). Those, like David, who know the comfort of the Lord, for whom years of grace give assurance on their death beds, will enter those final days of loneliness and pain wrapped in the arms of Christ feasting on biblical truth harvested in an earlier season. “When one sight after another fades away from your darkened eyes, look much more to Jesus,” Mr. Hamilton wrote. “For if He be your joy, your hope, your life; the faster you are clothed with the snows of age, the sooner will you renew your youth in the realms of immortality.” Another dying Christian observed, “The golden chain, which binds the believer’s heart to heaven, is waxing stronger. Its links are growing more firm and massive. All the powers of hell will not prevail to break them.”
If you enter the winter of your life without the provisions of God’s gracious promises, what hope do you have? Do not spend your youth pursuing your own desires, but prepare—“Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble.”
If you have children, review with them this passage from Ecclesiastes. Impress upon them the need to follow Christ when they are young, for a day may come when they are unable to turn and follow Him. If you are older and know the Lord, be comforted that every day you are one step closer to an eternity of peace.
