ECCLESIASTES 12.1-5

1-2. Remember your Creator in the days of your youth [choice], before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, "I find no pleasure in them" - before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark, and the clouds return after the rain;

3. When the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men stoop, when the grinders cease because they are few, and those looking through the windows grow dim;

4. When the doors to the street are closed and the sound of grinding fades; when men rise up at the sound of birds, but all their songs grow faint;

5a. When men are afraid of heights and of dangers [low places, holes] in the streets; when the almond tree blossoms and the grasshopper drags himself along, and desire no longer is stirred [the caperberry shall fail].

The transition to a concluding section is signaled here as the positive thinking of the previous section is balanced with a dose of inescapable reality -- as Solomon urges us to recall the past and reconcile it with our future.

Throughout this section of Ecclesiastes, Solomon seems to have stressed principles of sound management and the power of working as part of a team, as a corporation -- an organization that has been likened to a living organism with a physical body that tends to age, become less vigorous, slow down and decline into a humiliating senility.

Perhaps, therefore, Solomon is also encouraging us here to consider the health and vitality of our aging organization in a similar fashion and find ways to arrest or at least slow down its decline – using his list of physical attributes as the basis for brainstorming even silly sounding questions such as: What are the teeth of the organization, and why are they now few in number? What is their function? How can they be replaced, filled or crowned? . . . What has happened to the desire and virility of the organization, and why? . . . Does the organization still see clearly – and how does it see? What does it need to see? How does it process the information received from its environment? How good is its nervous system? . . . and so on, with each aspect of the operation.

Reminding us once again of the sheer futility of human achievement and fame and fortune, and the fact that all earthly success must come to an end sooner or later, Solomon devotes several verses to the description of old age, the inevitable march of time and the sad decrepitude that must come to even the fittest and most virile of individuals. Face these fundamental facts of life, he is saying – get real, get right with your Creator, and modify your conduct accordingly.

Adam and Eve and their immediate descendants were not able to call on the experience of generations living before them, and perhaps this is why God granted them several hundred years of life, enough time to learn lessons from their own and other people's mistakes and live more wisely as a result.

We can only wonder what Adam and Eve must have thought as they found their beautiful bodies finally weakening, the wrinkles gradually appearing in the skin, and the hair turning gray. The promised Death, it must have seemed, was actually a process – with plenty of early-warning signs of the impending end. And so it still is today.

Trouble is heading your way, says Solomon, and the pleasures that once seemed so important and easily available are about to be chased away. Like the unwelcome return of clouds so soon after the rain has been falling, so, in old age, no sooner is one trouble survived than a new infirmity appears to take its place.

The next verse sums up life quite nicely. In Solomon’s clever metaphor, the keepers of the house, that now tremble and lose their coordination must be the hands and arms, those amazing instruments that perform so many tasks – preparing food and putting it into the mouth, putting on clothes, brushing and combing the hair, sweeping, polishing, grasping and carrying -- holding a book, painting, carving, embroidery, opening the door, sowing seeds or steering a car. The list is endless, as those who have suffered the loss of a limb know only too well. In the end, then, even a talented artist, painter, potter or woodworker will lose ability to transforms the concept of his imagination into a physical artifact.

Perhaps the strong men that now stoop under their load, are the legs – the two limbs that enable us to stand up, that carry us about, climb the stairs, go for a walk, run and kick a ball and help us dig the garden, among other things. As a result, the doors to the street are closed and you become house-bound – and should you can venture out, you are afraid of falling down or tripping in a pothole in the road,.

The grinders that become few must be teeth, the molars in particular, which make it possible to chew and grind food -- and perhaps the precision of Solomon’s phrasing is illustrated by the fact it is these, rather than the front teeth, that people tend to lose with age. The windows of this metaphorical house are probably the eyes, and what Solomon seems to be saying is that our ability to operate and interact with our environment, to live and do things, will gradually be taken away from us.

The sense of hearing becomes faint, so that the familiar sounds of daily life around you fade, even the penetrating low-pitched sound a mill grinding out flour – and much more so, perhaps, the higher pitched sounds of the song of a bird. Paradoxically, however, the sound of their twittering in the silence of early morning easily awakens you from your shallow sleep.

In time the darkest of hair turns as white as the blossom of an almond tree, apparently the earliest tree to blossom.

More burdensome for many, however, is the plight of the tired and lethargic grasshopper -- which evidently has a sexual connotation, probably describing the lethargy of an organ that no longer jumps up in response to the call of duty, as if now too heavy and feeble, possibly implying impotence. In any case, the sexual desire that drives it, will, like all other physical appetites, finally fades – and we become mere shadow of our former selves. Some versions mention that even the caperberry, used by the ancients as an aphrodisiac, “shall fail”, and no longer be effective in correcting the sad situation.

Think about these things while you are young, says Solomon – or in your days of choice, as some render it, in the days when you still have the ability to choose and make changes, to plan and achieve things, before your horizons shrink in and your world closes tight around you. No matter how old we are, we can become youthful again inside, in our hearts by casting off the moral decrepitude of the sinful inner nature that manifests itself in envy, resentment, bitterness, malice and immorality, as Paul describes (Galatians 5:19-21). Now are the days of our choice.

Just as there is an aging outer man, so symbolically there is an inner man who needs to perish and pass away and so end his futile existence.

Remember your Creator, he says – the one who made you and the only one who can deliver you from the disaster of death to come. Think soberly on these things, Solomon is saying – get your affairs in order and activities of this transient life in proper perspective, and modify your conduct accordingly.

Could it be that Paul’s comparison of the Christian Church to the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12-31) is a metaphor divinely inspired by the reading of this very section of Ecclesiastes? The Church is one body, he says, but with many parts – Jesus is the head, the brain, and each of us is a member or limb with a function to perform and a contribution to make, be it only the contribution of the mutual heat generated by a single cell, the warmth which typifies love, in contrast to the coldness of a reptilian creature.

In Paul’s discussion, which focuses on the use of spiritual gifts in particular, such as the ability to spontaneously speak in foreign languages, he is pointing out that different parts of the body have different functions, so that no member should expect to exercise every gift or perform every function of the body of the Church.

Paul also stresses that all gifts come from God and are intended to be used in the service of other people, rather than for self-aggrandisment ((1 Corinthians 12:7), a mistake apparently made by some Christians at Corinth who made vain but worthless displays of their abilities.

Physical decrepitude is a metaphor for moral decrepitude and all disease is a type of the wasting moral sickness of a person infected with greed, lust, perversity and every kind of evil imaginable – with germs representing the invisible evil influences that are all around. Perhaps Paul has such metaphors in mind when he uses phrases reminiscent of those in this section of Ecclesiastes to describes the spiritual senility and moral feebleness of so many people in the ancient Greek society, saying, Quote: “They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more” (Ephesians 4:18-19).

Although physical decrepitude is inescapable, spiritual decrepitude can be cured and the condition miraculously reversed, as Paul goes on to explain, saying, Quote: “You have put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires – being constantly renewed in the spirit of your mind, having put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:22-24).

The Greek word rendered here as corrupted can also mean spoiled, withered and shrivelled, perhaps after the manner of the body of a very old person or a rotting apple -- and is being used by Paul as a metaphor for the destructive effect of the sin on the mind and the inner man.

Since, as Solomon stresses, all human is transient and all achievement futile, what hope or purpose is there? The answer, as provided in the New Testament, lies in salvation from sin by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ – and the interesting creative reversal almost certainly suggested by this section of Ecclesiastes that at the same time that the physical man is perishing, growing weaker and getting ready to die, the new spiritual man should be growing and developing, like an unborn baby in the womb, being prepared for a new, second birth to eternal life in the Kingdom of God, as Jesus himself describes (John 3:1-8).

Finally, extending that creative insight into the message of Ecclesiastes, Paul stresses that the essence of true religion is a personal transformation, as opposed to one of “works”, an outward show of ritual, physical regulation and aceticism – stressing that, Quote: “Those who want to make a good impression outwardly are trying to compel you to be circumcised . . . Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything -- what counts is a new creation” (Galatians 6:12 & 15) -- a New Man.