“For
everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time
to be born, and a time to die.” –Ecclesiastes 3:1-2
We get
excited when a baby is born. There is fresh celebration when we’re newly wed,
entering a new job, or buying a first home to raise our children in. When
something is new, our imaginations run wild with future memories made and the
hope of life getting better. But babies grow old and die. Newlyweds endure a
lifetime of two sinners living together. Jobs turn into careers that we work
until our bodies fail, and we retire. Houses age and children move out. Hopes
and dreams excite us, but living out life drags us. We aren’t prepared for the
fight. The world does not prepare us to age and to die.
The world
only knows how to celebrate what is fresh. That’s why fads are so quick to come
and go. We are pressured to discover a “new you,” to find what makes our hearts
flutter afresh each day. Youth culture is celebrated far more than wisdom from
a life well lived and a life prepared to die well. But the freshness of new
things is not better than the end. Ecclesiastes 7:8 reads, “Better is the end
of a thing than its beginning, and the patient in spirit is better than the
proud in spirit.” Arrogance keeps us impatient. A humble faith in God gives us
patient endurance to age well and die well to the glory of God.
I learned
something from lying in a hospital bed for 3 days last week: our existence is a
fragile mortality. Wisdom comes from aging well; that is growing in Christ-likeness.
Wisdom is found in dying well; that is trusting that the celebration of things
in the end is better than the beginning. God is sovereign, and I know I gained
more wisdom in 3 days than I could in 3 weeks at a Bible conference. My folly
is more than an information problem; deeper still, it is a relationship
problem. The course of our lives has phases, but then we die. Has eternity with
Jesus been displayed as my highest joy while aging and walking toward my death
on earth?
Wisdom to
age well and die well must be Spirit gifted wisdom in the Word received with
humility and a dependence upon God’s sovereignty even when I am left confused
and my “why” questions are left unanswered. O for grace to trust Him more!
Grant us grace, O Lord, to trust You and depend upon You even if it means
temporary pain in this temporary life. Give grace to our eyes of faith to see
eternity with You as far greater, far more satisfying than even our wildest
dreams on earth. Teach us to age well and to die well, displaying Your glory
through us to a world that is dying. Amen.
