| “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” (Ecclesiastes 12:1). |
| Our verse for today has a most important bit of instruction for us; it tells us to remember our Creator when we are young. If you were to ask a large group of Christians how old they were when they got saved, you would almost always find that most of them accepted the Lord Jesus before they were 20 years old. Some get saved later, and some even get saved when they are very old. A man whom I knew about got saved a few years ago at the age of 96, but this is very rare. I had a good friend who got saved when he was about 65, but again, this is unusual. |
| Sadly, many young people today perhaps really intend to get saved, but they want to enjoy the pleasures of this world for a while. They do enjoy what the Bible calls “the pleasures of sin for a season,” but then eventually they get old. Then their bodies and minds start to fail, and they find they cannot enjoy those pleasures anymore. They have to say, as our verse says, “I have no pleasure in them.” But then, they have nothing else in which to have pleasure; their hearts are now empty. Perhaps you have seen this type of person in a nursing home, where older people live who need some extra care. Some of these people are very difficult to manage, for they are constantly frustrated when they can no longer enjoy things that they used to enjoy. |
| How much different it is for a Christian! Yes, a Christian’s body gets old too, and it cannot do the things it used to do. But Christians have Christ, and as Paul reminds us, “Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16). Perhaps you know someone like this too — someone whose body and mind are failing a little, yet he or she is very happy, and enjoying the Lord. People like this also enjoy the thought that, as they get older, they are only getting closer to their heavenly home. If anyone reading this is not saved, our verse today has good advice for you. |
