Now is the time to live for God. Now is the time to fear the Lord. Now is the time to walk wisely under the sun. Life will not necessarily get easier as we grow older. However old you are, these are the years to love God with your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Don’t live for the things that cannot satisfy the human heart.

Throughout the book of Ecclesiastes, the reality of death is in front of your face. That’s part of the writer’s strategy: to confront you with your mortality and your future in the grave. In the scheme of the book, embracing your mortality is key to living wisely. You can’t control life, you can’t shepherd the wind, you can’t be rich enough or smart enough to defeat death, and your toilsome work will still leave you in the dust.

At first, this bracing confrontation with our mortality can leave us unsettled. But the writer wants his readers to pursue wisdom under the sun, and this pursuit will mean fearing the Lord and obeying him (Eccl. 12:13). We must remember that our days are limited, this world does not offer what can truly satisfy our hearts, and we were made to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.

By thinking about the end of life, we can orient ourselves more wisely in the present. In fact, the writer of Ecclesiastes wants especially the young to heed his words. He speaks to the “young man” in Ecclesiastes 11:9. No doubt there will be many readers of Ecclesiastes who don’t fit into the “young” category anymore. But for the young, there may be many years for them to enjoy walking with God in wisdom and reverence.

In Ecclesiastes 12:1–2, the writer says, “Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, ‘I have no pleasure in them’; before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return after the rain.”

Just as the opening chapters of Proverbs are the speeches of a father to his son, the writer in Ecclesiastes is aiming his words at younger people so that they will walk wisely with God for many years. He wants to expose folly and emphasize our vulnerability. And he wants to be honest about the challenges of old age.

Because old age comes with more physical challenges, the writer of Ecclesiastes speaks of those years as less pleasurable. His comparison is with the physical vitality and liveliness of youth. Growing old involves the dimming of life—like the sun, moon, and stars growing dark. The imagery (of lessening light and returning clouds) is about physical life nearing its end.

The writer provides an allegory to help us sense what the advance of old age can mean. Those are the years “when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those who look through the windows are dimmed” (Eccl. 12:3).

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