Remember Your Creator

“Remember your Creator

in the days of your youth,

before the days of trouble come...”

~Ecclesiastes 12:1 (NIV).

Troubles come to every home. And the only effective preparation against the troubles of life is faith. For faith will help us see truth; better still it may motivate us to seek it.

It is bad enough to complain when there is little to complain about. This, however, is the common flow of life—we complain far too much, as a sweeping generalisation. And then when something truly horrendous occurs what can anyone who usually complains about the superficial things in life do then?

The odds are something truly horrendous will occur to all of us at some stage.

The Creator has designed a life for us that might not quite circumvent the troubles of life, but it does make them largely irrelevant, for we have a God for eternity and we have him now, in the midst of our at times chaotic lives.

And if we didn’t choose for God in our youth, we’re still youthful enough to do it, so far as he’s concerned—we can do this, with effect, at any age. We can choose for him now and our troubles do not then need to either crush us into spiritual death or force us to run the other way. We can meet them head on with God and with the support and love of those around us who might encourage us.

We have time to prepare now before the trouble hits. Or, if it has already hit, we take spiritual solace in God—he helps us backfill the spiritual void toward resilience.

This simply resonates the wisdom of Proverbs 1:23; 33... Woman Wisdom is speaking: “If you had responded to my rebuke, I would have poured out my heart to you and made my thoughts known to you... but whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease, without fear of harm.” Woman Wisdom is simply speaking as God’s superintendent over the human race; wisdom structures command the status quo of life.

Life does warn us. Wisdom protects us most of the time, if we invest in it, and then our faith in God covers the rest of the equation—for when the trouble comes.

If we don’t provide for ourselves a pathway to wisdom—which is simply a firm-enough obedience to God in terms of realised understanding via acts of diligence and prudence—and we don’t grow our faith in God to provide for us both in the good times and hence, for practice, the dark times, we will always fail to reap the best life has to offer us.

For both wisdom and faith we must look to the Creator—both, which come intrinsically from truth, come from him and him alone.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.