Before I had even reached my sixtieth birthday, I started to think that I was getting old, that very soon I would be able to apply for an ‘Older Person’s Bus Pass’ for free bus travel! But as I still had plenty of energy and was involved with my husband in quite a demanding ministry in a Spanish-speaking church in the south of Spain, I concluded that I couldn’t be old yet. Two decades on, life is different and I am in no doubt that I am in my senior years. I’ve faced changes in health, requiring increased medication and I’ve also gone through quite difficult physical challenges at times, but I am really thankful to God for the health that I currently enjoy.
At the same time, I recognise that it is a privilege to live in a country that provides such good, free health care. I realise, too, that not all older women have the same experiences. Some reach their older years as single people and others after the loss of a spouse, facing life on their own. I try to bear in mind Jesus’ teaching that life is so much more than thinking about our physical bodies and the concerns we have for them. He also spoke of the provision and wonderful care that our Heavenly Father shows us because he is aware of all that we need. (It is always reassuring to re-read Matthew 6:25-34).
A WISE TEACHER’S WORDS.
If, like me, you find the book of Ecclesiastes difficult to read, you are glad to reach the last chapter – because it is the end! But having come to it recently in my morning readings, I was helped by the SU notes and other commentators to think about it in more detail, as it describes what life was like in old age at the time it was written.
Ecclesiastes 12:1-8
The chapter begins with a wakeup call to young people to think about their Creator, to consider what they could expect in their older years and to make good use of the intervening ones. The following verses are full of interesting images and memorable expressions. So, let’s look at them and then we’ll reflect upon them; not from the purely ‘under the sun’ view of the Teacher, but with an awareness of the difference that knowing God through his Son makes in our lives, as we share in the new life he has given us.
Verse 2. Life is described as being like the seasons of the year. When the summer days are past, winter comes bringing less light and more clouds and rain. Gloom and depression become more likely. Dark days can be experienced at any age, of course, but it is not uncommon for older people to be disturbed by regrets, unpleasant memories and low feelings.
Verse 3. The body is presented as a house and we are its ‘keepers.’ Limbs, like the arms and legs, are no longer strong and hands begin to tremble. Difficult as it is, total independence becomes limited and support from others will be needed. Loss of ‘grinders’ (teeth) must have been so hard! There were no dentists. How thankful many of us are for dental prosthetics that help us to continue enjoying our food and pronouncing our words as we want them to sound. Changes in eyesight can be helped now for most people by glasses with corrective lenses, but it is described in these verses as looking through windows and seeing only dimly. There were no opticians.
Verse 4. I understand that this refers to loss of hearing as ‘when the doors to the street are closed’ and the sound of what is going on around can no longer be distinguished. Many would waken early in the morning, as elderly people often do, ‘with the birds’ although they didn’t hear them as before. The end of the verse seems to imply that their own voices were not what they were! There were no audiologists or speech therapists.
Verse 5. In a time when there were no social services or catalogues of aids for the elderly, many would fear to go out. The narrow streets of an Eastern town were doubtless terrifying to an elderly pedestrian. I love the idea that the blossoming almond tree could be a picture of the soft white hair of the elderly! The following part of the verse has the figure of a dragonfly that, when the colder months arrive, moves around slowly, and remains motionless for prolonged periods before entering its winter torpor! This is obviously speaking of the approach of the end of life. At that point ‘people go to their eternal home and mourners go about the streets’.
Verses 6 and 7. When I was young, I remember singing a hymn with the first line ‘Someday the silver cord will break’. As the rest of the hymn was about being with the Lord, I thought it must refer to something that snapped within a person as they died! Unlike me, the author, Fanny Crosby,1 knew Ecclesiastes – and had taken the line from these verses. People have different ideas as to what the ‘silver cord’ and the ‘golden bowl’ were, but they could have been the bowl which contained the oil of a lamp and the cord for hanging it up. As they are linked with a shattered pitcher and a broken wheel at the well, they symbolise the sadness of a useful life coming to its end when ‘the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it’.
Verse 8. The Teacher’s conclusion of it all was that everything was meaningless!
A WONDERFUL FUTURE.
What a difference the resurrection of Jesus Christ our Saviour makes to our own situation whether we live to old age or not! When Christ rose from the dead, he became the ‘firstfruits’2 – that is, the beginning of a huge harvest of people who will also be raised to life at his coming. Whatever our terminal condition has been at death or if we are still living, he ‘will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body’.3 Paul wrote ‘to die is gain’ because it is the moment when the believer goes ‘to be with Christ’ and is in his safe keeping until his return. The bodies we shall have then will enable all God’s people to be part of that innumerable number that God himself will dwell among in a new heaven and a new earth.4
‘Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.’5
Our lives are not meaningless.
1 Fanny Crosby (1820-1915) was a blind American poet, who wrote about 8000 hymns and songs.
2 Rom.15:20
3 Phil.3:21, 24
4 Rev.21:3
5 2 Cor.5:5
