The Remembrance

Moses, the man of God, wrote a psalm about the shortness of human life, and it is sober reading. The days of our years, he says, are threescore years and ten, and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow, for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. We are like grass that flourishes in the morning and is cut down by evening, like a tale that is told and then is over. And out of this clear-eyed look at our own brevity comes the prayer. So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

To number our days is to reckon honestly how few they are, to live in the awareness that they are counted and running out, that we are mortal and the end is real and not far. This is not a morbid thing but a wise one, for the psalmist ties it directly to wisdom. That we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. The remembrance of death is a teacher, and the lesson it teaches is how to live. The soul that forgets it must die lives foolishly; the soul that remembers, wisely.

THE WISDOM OF THE END

For the remembrance of death orders a life as nothing else can. It sifts the important from the trivial in an instant, showing what will matter when we come to die and what will not, so that we stop spending our few days on things that will mean nothing at the end. It loosens the grip on what we cannot keep, for a man who remembers he must leave it all does not clutch it so desperately. And it spurs us to what matters while there is time. The Preacher said it is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting, for that is the end of all men, and the living will lay it to his heart. The end considered makes the present wise.

This is why those most serious about God have kept death always before them, not to darken life but to sober and clarify it. They wrote it on their walls and in their hearts, remember that thou must die, not from a love of gloom but from a love of wisdom, knowing that the soul which forgets its death is under a spell, living as if it had unlimited time, squandering the numbered days as though they were numberless. To number the days breaks the spell. It wakes the sleeper to the truth that his life is a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away, and sends him to live it well while he has it.

REDEEMING THE TIME

And so the remembrance of death is a call not to panic but to diligence, to the redeeming of the time. See then that ye walk circumspectly, the apostle says, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. To redeem the time is to buy it back from waste, to spend our few and numbered days on what is worthy of them, not to let them leak away in trifling and delay. The Lord himself worked by this reckoning. I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day, he said; the night cometh, when no man can work. There is a day given us for our work, and a night coming that will end it, and the wise soul works while it is day.

This does not mean a frantic and anxious busyness, cramming the days with activity out of fear of the end. That is not wisdom but its counterfeit. It means a quiet, ordered diligence, a spending of each day on what matters, a refusal to waste the numbered hours on what will mean nothing when they are gone. The one who remembers death does not hurry in panic; he walks circumspectly, deliberately, redeeming the time, doing the day’s true work in the day, and leaving the outcome and the length of his life to God.

DEATH SWALLOWED UP

And for the believer, this remembrance of death is not finally a dark thing but a hopeful one, for death has been conquered. To the Christian, death is a defeated enemy, swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting, the apostle cries, O grave, where is thy victory? The sting is drawn, the victory undone, by the death and rising of Christ. So we number our days not in the dread of those who have no hope, but in the sober gladness of those going home. For to me to live is Christ, Paul could say, and to die is gain. Gain. Death, for the one in Christ, is not loss but gain, the doorway home.

So the Christian remembers death as both a teacher and a doorway, a teacher of wisdom for the living of these few days, and a doorway, when they are done, into the presence of the Lord. He does not pretend death away, as the world does, hiding it and fearing it and never speaking of it. He looks it full in the face, numbers his days by it, lets it order his life, and then looks through it to the risen Christ on the other side, and is not afraid. The sting is gone. What remains is a teacher and a door.

SET THINE HOUSE IN ORDER

When King Hezekiah lay sick, the prophet Isaiah came to him with a hard word from the Lord. Set thine house in order, he said, for thou shalt die, and not live. It is a word every mortal must one day hear, and the wise soul hears it before it is spoken by a prophet at the bedside, and sets its house in order while there is time. To set the house in order is to live each day as one who may not have another, to leave nothing needful undone that death would leave undone forever, to keep the accounts of the soul settled with God and with men, so that whenever the summons comes it finds us ready and not scrambling.

For the great peril is to be caught unready, to have put off the reconciliation, the confession, the amendment, the word of love unspoken, the wrong unrighted, always meaning to attend to it later, and to have the later taken away. The remembrance of death is the cure for this endless putting off. It presses on us today what we would leave for a tomorrow that may not come, urging us to make right now what we would be desperate to have made right at the end. Do not carry into death an unforgiven quarrel, an unconfessed sin, an undone duty, if it is in your power today to set it in order.

This readiness is what the Lord pressed on his disciples again and again. Be ye also ready, he said, for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh. The hour is hidden on purpose, so that no day may be treated as safe to be unready in, and the whole of a wise life is to live ready, house always in order, lamp always trimmed, so that the coming of the Lord, whether at the end of the world or the end of our small life, finds us not surprised and unprepared but waiting and glad.

And there is a peace in such readiness that the unready never know, the peace of a soul that has nothing left undone that it dreads to leave undone, that has made its peace with God through Christ and kept short accounts with men, and can therefore meet each day, and death itself, without the terror of the unprepared. Set thine house in order, then, not in a season of sickness only, but now, while you are well, so that the numbering of your days issues not in dread but in a settled and ready peace.

So teach yourself to number your days, and ask God to teach you. Keep death before you, not as a terror but as a wise teacher, letting it sift the trivial from the important and loosen your grip on what you cannot keep. Redeem the time, working the day’s true work while it is day, for the night cometh. And remember death in the hope of the resurrection, as a defeated enemy and a doorway home, so that you neither waste your days in forgetfulness nor fear their end in dread. So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.