Listen

The command of this passage is simple: remember your Creator in the days of your youth (1). Don’t wait until old age sets in, when your your mind begins to fail you (2); and your teeth and eyesight give way (3); and so does your hearing (4). Don’t say to yourself that you’ll wait for the silver-haired days (5), when death is near (6-7), to remember your Creator. Because your life is a vanity: a wisp of morning mist - here today, gone tomorrow.

But what are we to remember about our Creator?

The Preacher has told us already: that in the midst of all this vanity, as we walk in this cacophonous parade called life, there are gifts along the way. Youth itself is a gift (11:9); so are bread and wine and money (10:19); so too are wise, sacrificial leaders (10:17). The gifts keep coming: a fine meal with friends (9:7); a wife to enjoy (9:8); and work to do (9:10).

But we can only see and enjoy those gifts if we remember that they come from Somewhere, from Someone - a Creator. This Creator is generous, even in the brevity of life. The only way we may enjoy the gifts of life is to see with gratitude that they are indeed gifts from His hand, for our joy. The dark tint of Ecclesiastes is not a feature but a bug - and it only comes from forgetting our gift-giving Creator.