Remember NOW Your Creator

One admonition of The Preacher is this, “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.” The best time to remember one’s Creator is when your days are young and the sun still shines. You have a lifetime of service ahead of you in those days. You have many pages (God willing) that are not yet written on. It is good, it is blessed, to remember your Creator in those early days, because there is so much potential for producing everlasting fruit, if we but remember him.

Those days are the days “While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain.” Days will come when the clouds return, when the lights are darkened, when the days are shortened. In those days,

the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of musick shall be brought low; Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets.

Last week I returned to my old home town, where I grew up and graduated from high school. None of our family are left in the town. The old house is still there, and the playground across the street. Years ago, the summers were glorious there, when the sun didn’t set till very late, around 10 pm. We were allowed to play in the park till after dark and the shouts of many children out late in those days echo in my memory.

The reason I went back was because of my fiftieth high school reunion. It is hard to believe it’s been that long. I am (as you might be able to tell) a bit of a sentimentalist. I went back to see as many of the old friends as I could and to see if I recognized any of them (or if they recognized me). There were about sixteen of us there (out of about one hundred). A few welshers didn’t show up… they should have! One was planning to come but passed away suddenly this summer before the gathering. He went to his long home. I would have loved to see him and find out where life had taken him.

Besides sentimentality, I went because I wanted one last time to reach out to these people I went to school with. Could it be that they might pause in their lives and listen to the gospel? I hope so yet. I spent a lot of time with one of my best friends – the only one I could name without prompting. I think one or two recognized me right away. I tried to weave in something about the Lord in each conversation. When they found out what I do, it wasn’t too hard.

However, there is a distance between me and them. There always was. Though we went to the same school, were raised in the same town, lived the same culture, almost all of them grew up outside of any church. In the days of their youth, the things remembered were cars, booze, and girls (or boys). That was just the reality of an oil town and a public school. I was blessed with Christian parents and a Christian social network. That is not to say I was a perfect Christian, but it put a distance between me and them back in high school. That distance remains to this day. They were polite when they find out what I do, and there was a little conversation, but you get that sense of a wall beyond which they don’t want to go (and where they won’t let you pry).

My hope, though, is that the conversations aren’t over. Fifty years have passed since life decisions were made. These, my friends, set their course away from God many years ago. Most of them have succeeded in life according to the world’s standards, but what will happen to them when the “the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern”? What then?

I hope the renewed contact will allow future conversations. I hope that one or two or more will hear the word of God and it will sink down into their ears and into their hearts. There is still time yet. The days aren’t yet completely dark. The storm clouds are still a ways off.

A couple of my classmates, I find, actually live in my new hometown. May God grant opportunities in the days to come to share the word with them.

But what of the words of the Preacher?

Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.

Now is the time for us to press the word home to young people. We find that suddenly our church is filled with younger couples, and their young children. We need to be earnest evangelists with these young ones. We need to be diligent disciple makers. The light lasts only so long, and today is the day we have to serve him.

Then…

Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

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Don Johnson is the pastor of Grace Baptist Church of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada.

This mediation is based on Ecclesiastes 12.1-7.

Photo by Kush Dwivedi on Unsplash