“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...”
Here the writer reminds us that the days of decrepitude will soon hasten on, the years of the decline of life draw nigh, when the senses, organs and powers of the system will be so much enervated, obscured or destroyed as to lessen or spoil all their enjoyments, however many blessings and privileges the Lord may have heaped upon us; sad truth, realized by many who have been signally favored, “While the sun or the moon or the stars be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain.” Or when in the decline of life, the organs of sight shall be obscured, that the sun’s genial rays shall appear darkened, his light dimmed; when the light of the moon and stars shall be too feeble to illumine the nocturnal pathway; and when after the rain, instead of the return of the cheerful beams of the sun, it shall be as though the dark clouds were still hovering in the heavens by reason of the failing of the eyesight...
When in youthful vigor and activity we can sport over the precipice, or play upon the housetop; whereas, in the years of our decrepitude we tremble at the idea of occupying an exalted position, and quake with fear at finding an obstruction in our pathway, lest we should be hurled to the ground...
When we review the transient career of our fast fleeting lives, the utter impossibility of all earth’s emoluments to satisfy, happify or even to perpetuate them beyond a span, we may truly say with the “Preacher”, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity”; and with the poet,
How vain are all things here below,
How false, and yet how fair;
Each pleasure hath its poison, too,
And every sweet a snare.
Excerpts from thoughts on Ecclesiastes 12:1-7 by J. F. Johnson
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