The rippling rivulets’ swift flow no sooner begins than dwindles to a damp residue. The ephemeral flood enraptures its creator, my 4-year-old grandson, who refills the blue plastic pale from the pool fifty times if once, each turn then inundating the edge of the deck again to stoop and observe the water draining into nearby grass-covered sand. He does it fifty times if once. I am watching him through a French door as I listen inside to successive generations offer anniversary encomiums to my parents’ 65 years of marriage; and to my mother’s most emphatic admonition for us, three generations of her progeny, to realize how quickly life flows toward the sand. (Well, she didn’t use exactly those words, but given what I was watching while she said it, you will forgive the paraphrase.)
On one hand is Qoheleth’s imagery: “Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, …before the silver cord is snapped, or the golden bowl is broken, …and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. …Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” Our brief life is to cleanse, color, shape, or enrich the land over which our Creator pours it. In short: there’s only so much time to do his will, the whole duty of humanity; let’s get to it.
On the other hand is the psalmist’s: “For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling; I will walk before the LORD in the land of the living. …Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.” (Despite a popular funeral interpretation, the last phrase’s meaning is not: “Yahweh expectantly desires the company of his saints after their death.”) The meaning is: “Yahweh cares about the pain or fear we face any day, even more so when we face death.” God pours billions of brief lives into the world if one, but every drop in every rivulet from every golden bowl captures his full attention.
Our life’s length is measured, not its value.
To a week redeeming time for purposes so important that he pours our lives to fulfil them.