Living in Light of the End
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Each of us will come to the end of our days on this earth. According to author David Gibson, every Christian should be focused on living life backward in the meantime. What does that mean?
God has called us to participate in the ordinary pursuits of life, such as eating, working, playing, sleeping, serving our neighbor, marrying, having children, and worshipping him. While we have control over our decisions on certain matters, many aspects of life are simply beyond our control. In his book Living Life Backward Gibson writes, “We are each writing the story of our lives, but we are not the main author” (p. 52).
We need to take comfort in God’s sovereign hand over all.
We often wrestle with past choices we have made: Should I have moved here? What if I had pursued a different vocation? Should I have married this person? Additionally, what we are able to choose to do depends upon the stage of life in which we find ourselves. It has been said that “youth is wasted on the young,” meaning that we would do a much better job of living life if only we knew when younger what we came to learn over time.
It’s part of life in this world to mourn our poor choices and wish we could have known the consequences of our decisions at the time and taken a different direction. Yet, God uses our experiences both to teach us wisdom and to sanctify us, growing us in holiness and conforming us to the image of his Son, and what may have seemed to be a less than ideal path is actually where God ordained for us to travel in his perfect will.
By living life backward, we can make wiser decisions along the way.
Knowing that we are limited in knowledge can cause us to freeze in fear, becoming filled with worry that we will make mistakes in future decisions, but we need to take comfort in God’s sovereign hand over all, including our own choices. Gibson reminds us that
It is part of living well to accept two things: first, we are enclosed within time’s bounds, and, second, God is not. What we do comes and goes, but “whatever God does endures forever” (3:14). (p. 52)
We cannot become wise by hiding from the world and living in a bubble. Because you’re not God, you’re going to make mistakes. Yet, these mistakes are permitted in God’s perfect wisdom, and he will use them to grow your faith and wisdom. By focusing on living life backward, thinking about what we want to accomplish and who we want to be when our time here on earth in done, we can make wiser decisions along the way.
Consider grabbing a cup of coffee or tea and taking ten to thirty minutes today to ponder what you want to accomplish before the end of your life, focusing on the nurturing of your relationships and loving and serving those whom God has placed in your life while you’re here on earth. Write down some short, intermediate, and long-term goals either in a journal or an electronic note and go back now and then to revisit what you wrote and make adjustments as needed along the way. As the old saying goes, aim at nothing and you’re sure to hit it!
If you’re not sure what to do, begin with trusting in Christ as your Savior and then strive to keep God’s commands with a thankful heart.
As Christians we have the consequent duty to obey our heavenly Father in all we do. Even though we are saved by the perfect work of Christ counted to us through faith alone in Christ alone by God’s grace alone, how we live as Christians matters. The apostle Paul makes this clear in his letter to the Roman church:
For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living….So then each of us will give an account of himself to God. (Rom. 14:7-9, 12)
In the last chapter of Ecclesiastes the preacher declares:
The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with[d] every secret thing, whether good or evil. (Eccles. 12:13-14)
The end here on earth ushers in the beginning of our eternal state in God’s presence.
We can always take heart that no matter how close or far away we are at any point in time when it comes to accomplishing our plans, it’s God’s will that matters most and he is sovereign everything in our lives:
The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps. (Prov. 16:9)
Be humble, recognize how limited your knowledge is, seek godly counsel from Scripture and wise people in your life, pray without ceasing, rest in God’s sovereignty and your sure hope in Christ, and focus on this day that has been given to you. When looking backward as you approach death, rejoice that this “end” is also the beginning of eternal life in the presence of your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
This article has been updated since its original publishing date of July 7, 2024.
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Recommended:
Living Life Backward: How Ecclesiastes Teaches Us to Live in Light of the End by David Gibson
