Ecclesiastes 12:1a “Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth . . .”

The older you get the more you understand the brevity of life. No one truly knows what tomorrow will bring. So a wise person will learn from the past and plan for the future, but live fully in the moment.

I had a strange and unsettling experience recently. My colleagues and I spent many hours at an empty school building. A beautiful new complex now houses the teachers, administration and students who used to occupy the halls of this now abandoned building. So we were cataloging and taking pictures of excess equipment to sell at auction.

As we traipsed from room to room I couldn’t rid myself of a sadness stemming from the deafening silence and the remnants of bustling days gone by. Teachers’ nameplates still identified each classroom. Forlorn plants sat on dusty desks and dog-eared posters with encouraging slogans hung dejectedly on the walls.

But the thing that hit the hardest was outside the cafeteria. After eating lunch I stepped into the hall and noticed an old morning announcement hanging on the wall. Out of curiosity I took a closer look. It was dated Thursday, March 12, 2020 – the day before everyone responded to the COVID-19 crisis.

No one knew that day they would not be coming back to this school as they had done in the months and years before. Teachers taught and students learned online for the rest of the year. When everyone finally returned to a somewhat normal setting, it wasn’t to this old building. All the needed items were hurriedly moved to the new complex, but the morning announcement from March 12 remained on the board outside the cafeteria as a reminder of how quickly life can change.

A very wise man, King Solomon, understood the brevity of life. He spent his days seeking fulfillment in all the wrong things. But as an older man, he advised others to remember their Creator in the days of their youth. He learned from his past that all he had sought after was vanity. He had wasted a lot of life and now time was short. He entreated his listeners to seek the only Person worth living for. The Creator and God of the universe is the One Who never changes.

So take a lesson from a wise, old king and an abandoned school building; learn from the past and plan for the future, but live in the moment. Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, because tomorrow comes quickly, and only He knows what it will bring.