Remember your Creator while you are young, before the days of
trouble come and the years
You know the saying, “You don't bend an old tree”. You know what
a bonzi is? It is those miniature replicas of large trees. In essence
they're the same, just kept small by trimming the roots. You don't
make a bonsai from a grown tree. I have a friend who's a missionary
to Japan. As a boy his parents were also missionaries to Japan for a
few years and made him accustomed to the land. The missionary
organisation they are working for know that if they don't get a child
in church, they won't do it as an adult. You don't make a bonsai from
a grown tree.
In the western world it is not much different. Most conversions take
place before adulthood.
Why do you think this is the case, according to our Scripture?
(When a group bible study first discus and get a consensus, before
turning to the answer. The same implies for the following questions.)
The first reason is because 'Remember' can become complicated. Once
the demands of life kick in, the quantity of things to remember
quickly quench the 'Remember' of God and His world, in a world that
has actually no place for God and faith – only reason and
reasonableness. To remember God as the 'Creator' is not easy in a
world where human reason is in control and creation is marginalised
in the swelling of technology and scientific answers. In the Dark
Ages it was easier to remember God, as creator, because one needed
God to create here and right now in day-to-day provisions. God was
needed to give bread and clothes and health today.
Do you see that this remember has to do with faith? Faith in a God
quickly becomes abstract when the answers of technology and science
do an apparently better job, in the pressures and evidences of life.
This is only to be persuaded by rhetoric, the same as what happened
with Eve in the Garden of Eden. The truth in rhetoric is not what is
right and wrong, but how something is being said. Right is what is
persuasive, like the apparent right of the lie of the snake in the
garden of Eden.
What are the days of trouble and what contradiction is hidden
in it?
The contradiction is that trouble days actually create faith, like
the example of someone in the Dark Ages as stated above. You know the
saying “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church”. In
trouble days of persecution, in e.g. former Russia or China today,
the church grows the fastest. The Trouble days of our text can't then
be difficult days per say.
The trouble days of our text are when the voice of the world, and the
voice of reality, calls one to make sense of life. Sense is the love
of money, the excess accumulation of possessions, status etc. As a
young person life is still in the future and the voice of the world
is to take hold of this future with a this-worldly-paradise
mentality. To get the best job possible, to get the dream house
build, to drive a neck-turning car. Trouble days are when God is not
necessary in a carefree world or in a man made system that solves all
problems.
When will one not find pleasure in God anymore and what is the
warning?
In short, one will not find pleasure in God anymore when the
sacrifice to follow Jesus becomes to demanding. When the first love
for Jesus demands a death to self and its desires. The warning is
that there is an invisible line when one finds no pleasure in God
anymore. Once one has crossed this line, turning back becomes almost
impossible. The most dangerous lie, out of hell, is “Later”. “You
can decide for Jesus later, after you have done this and that”.
“Later, on your deathbed you can turn to Jesus, like the thief on
the cross”. My friend, later you will have no desire.
When is one old?
Old is very relative. For you, as a teenager, I might be old, but you
know I don't think so. I still think I have a few years left in my
body and I rather think people in an old age home are old. My
previous supervisor is 66 and doesn't think he is old; both his
parents turned 100 before they died. On the other hand, I once heard
of a drug addict in Amsterdam, who at the age of 21, said her life is
over and she's just waiting for death. She was older than my previous
supervisor.
Old is relative, but very much has to do with lifestyle as well. Old
has to do with this world, but
