REMEMBER YOUR CREATOR

Remember your Creator in the days of your youth” (Ecclesiastes 12:1) begins one of the most quoted passages from the book of Ecclesiastes, a memory verse that many of us learned growing up in church for its educational and spiritual imperative.

But the extended passage seems more focused on aging than on youthful faithfulness, poetically describing the various diminished capacities that often come with advancing age. Listed among these is the tendency to become more fearful as we age: “Remember him before you become fearful of falling and worry about danger in the streets” (Ecclesiastes 12:5, NLT). One cause of our fears is the physical risk that comes from things that simply were not a challenge to us when we were young. Perhaps there is also the fear of aging itself, losing some of the vitality and confidence that—rightly or wrongly—we assumed when we were younger.

Often, there also seems to be an attitude of fearfulness among older people. Some may be afraid of what they do not know or understand, but some fear comes from experience, from recognizing our human frailty and fragility. “You have to be old to understand that verse, to see your whole life, from early heedlessness to present regret for heedlessness. . . . Was the particular admonition addressed to young people, to remind them that age will come for them too? Or reserved for grey heads who would hear it with the ears of experience?”* As much as it was a memory verse for us when we were young, this passage also speaks to us when we are older and begin to identify with some of the creative descriptions of the experiences of aging.

When older, it is just as important to “Remember your Creator . . .”

* Doris Lessing, “Introduction,” in Ecclesiastes (Melbourne, Australia: Text Publishing, 1998), x.