Year 2, Day 342: Ecclesiastes 12

This is the final chapter in the book of Ecclesiastes.  In some respects, I’m going to be sad to see this book go.  I personally feel that I have been challenged on a number of points in my life.  That has been good.  Moving ahead, we’ll Start the Song of Songs {sometimes referred to as the Song of Solomon} tomorrow.  But we get to go out of Ecclesiastes on an incredibly strong note!

Great Concluding Advice

Solomon gives us two great pieces of wisdom in the beginning section of Ecclesiastes 12.  First, remember God while you are young.  Second, he advises us to remember God before life goes sour.

So we’ll start with the importance of remembering God while we’re young.  Really, it is actually deeper than that.  He is really saying that we would be advised to develop patterns of faith while we are young and enjoying life.  This is such incredibly sage advice.

When I was a young child – pre-kindergarten, even – my parents set me up in a Wednesday night program.  I’ve spoken it’s praises before on this blog.  But that program combined Bible memorization, fellowship, achievement, and community service.  As I grew, the program grew with me.  The expectations became harder.  In those 6 years (or so) I developed a wonderful pattern of faith and growth towards my relationship with God.

Then something happened.  I became a teenager.  I abandoned many of those patterns of living, although I did not abandon God entirely.  I merely abandoned having Him first in my life.  I suppose this might be considered abandoning God if someone wants to argue the 10 Commandments – specifically the first 3 – with me.  In my teenage years things like Bible memorization and serving others weren’t important to me anymore.  What was important was my way of living.  I pursued my own personal enjoyment through technology, girls, music, etc.  So often the things I desired escaped my grasp as quickly as I thought I had it secured!  I fell completely out of every good habit of faith that I had developed.

But then God got His hands back on me when I was willing to listen.  Over the course of several years all of those patterns that my parents had instilled within me began to come flooding back into my life.  It was easy – well, easier – to come back to God because I knew what it looked like and felt like.  It was easier to return to God because I wasn’t doing it for the first time.  Because my parents had instructed me while I was young, returning to God was considerably easy.

This leads to the second reason that Solomon gives to us in this opening section.  Solomon suggests we develop those patterns with God before life becomes full of hardship.  Had I waited until my life was full of self-inflicted misery before turning to God, the road would have been far more difficult.  It certainly could have been possible – God can do anything.  But it would have absolutely been far more difficult.  It is hard enough to be in relationship with God in this world.  But having to overcome this world without having an idea of what it feels like to overcome it makes it all the more difficult.

Obedience and Teaching

Solomon then ends with the teaching on following God and obeying His commands.  In fact, he even goes a step further.  Solomon emphasizes the importance of teaching them to others.  I find there to be a great amount of truth in these passages as well.  When is it that we grow the most?  We grow the most when we attempt to teach others.  We grow the most when we are in that position with other people of explaining what it is that we believe and why we make the decision that we do.

I could do math no better than the years that I taught it in High School.  I could speak about theology no better than the years that I was expected to talk theologically.  I could play my guitar no better than the years that I was helping to teach other people how to play their guitar.  Teaching others in the faith is one of the most important things that any of us can do to cause our own faith life to grow and mature.

Why do we want to mature?  Well, we want to mature so that we can be closer to God.  We want to mature so that we can be more obedient.  We want to mature so that we can walk with the Lord.  Again it comes back to the closing points that Solomon gives to us in this book.  There is nothing better than keeping the commandments of the Lord.

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