Today’s passage: Ecclesiastes 12:1-8
Helpful thoughts:
- God does not exist for our good pleasure, we exist for His.
- Thinking of the future helps us to live better in the present.
- The imagery in verses 2-7 convey the aging, growing old of a person.
- The eyes dim
- Our bodies weaken
- We may grow fearful and recluse/lonely
- Our hair whitens (Almond tree blossoms)
- Our bodies break and give way and our life pours out
- The sweetness of these years is the fruit and memories of a life well lived for the Lord, and the eagerness of going home and seeing Jesus face to face.
- The “vanity” is the vapor that is life. It’s here and its gone. Don’t wait to start living the way your old self will have wished you lived.
Questions to consider:
- If God is my creator than who has the best idea how I could best live this vapor of a life? How should that change my thinking, my values, my interests, my planning, my actions…everything?
- How does thinking about the future beyond retirement help us to plan accordingly for retirement? How might it change some of our plans?
- How does our salvation in Christ totally liberate us from a life that just pours out onto the ground and dissipates when we die? How amazing is it to be a child of God!?!