Remember God - Ecclesiastes 12

“For the dust will return to the earth, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.”

The simplistic yet profound truth provided in Ecclesiastes 12 brought my soul to tears. There’s scripture in the Bible that literally tugs at the strings of your heart, and if you are anything like me, you think about old age and death quite often. This passage is a call to young people to remember God; to keep God in their mind and think of him over and over again. To consider God; for Christ to be memory retention. When a person is young, they are filled with energetic-life and God can be the last thought on their mind. Simply because they are preoccupied with the things of this world: people, places, monetary gain, education, social media, etc. Life is moving so fast and the ones who are young will try their absolute best to keep up. But Solomon is petitioning a different approach that is far more valuable because it’s the right way to live life. One day we are going to wake up and life will be different because we will no longer be young. We may need someone to assist us with the simplest things like putting our shirt on. I am currently witnessing people in my family who are in their later years of life experiencing challenges that the writer talks about in chapter 12. It’s painful to witness how their life could have been different, possibly better, if they’d only knew the importance of clinging to God and his word in their youth and choosing to apply this truth to their life. Only God knows how transformational life would have been for my relatives.

“Remember him before the door to life’s opportunities is closed and the sound of work fades. Now you rise at the first chirping of the birds, but then all their sounds will grow faint” (verse 4). There is a reality that everyone will have to step into if they live long enough and that reality is aging. One day we will become our great-grandparents and we will be sharing our life stories and reminiscing about the days of our youth. My hope is that we all take heed to what the writer is pleading. God is the most important life source for human beings and its vital that we truly understand that now. The Bible tells us to not love this world or the things it offers us. If we choose to love this world, we will not have the love of God in us. Why? Because the world only offers a craving for physical pleasure, it’s a craving for everything we see. It causes us to have pride in our achievements and possessions. These things are not from the Father but are from this world. The word tells us that this world is fading away, along with everything people crave, but anyone who does what pleases God will live forever (1 John 2:15-17). There’s a goodness in knowing that we are called to seek God and truly know him while we are young because God has things for each of us here and now on this earth to do. We all have gifts and talents and we all are his children. It would be foolish of us to miss our reason for existence simply because we craved the created things more than the creator. My hope in concluding this book with my husband is that all who read our blogs go to the scripture to study and apply what it says. Just the way Solomon put it in verse 13, “When all has been heard the conclusion of the matter is this: fear God and keep his commands, because this is for all humanity. For God will bring every act to judgement, including every hidden thing, whether good or evil.”