Remember your Creator before the silver cord is broken.
I have something special to share with you. Its a recording of Dianne, my teacher and my friend. We are studying Ecclesiastes 12 together and she is fighting for her life and still teaching.
Her voice is tired and sure at the same time. She had already seen the silver cord. She already knew what the clay feels like when it starts to give. And instead of spending that breath on comfort she spent it teaching me how to die.
That is the part that still undoes me. It is bittersweet in the deepest way I know. Sweet because she loved me enough to tell the truth. Bitter because I did not know how short the cord already was. She taught as if she did.
She made me promise I would tell the people. So I am telling you the way she handed it to me, line by line, stopping where she stopped.
If you can, play the recording here and let her tell you with her own words. She was always so good with explaining the unexplainable!
Let’s begin at the top of the chapter the way she wanted it begun.
“Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come…”
“Stop right there!”
She would not let me run past the first line. She said he starts by telling us who he is talking about. God. The Creator. “This is about God and you!”
The Teacher opens with remembering. The whole chapter is one long warning to remember before. Before the evil days come. Before the years arrive when you will say you have no delight in them. Before the lights go strange, the house starts trembling and the silver cord is all that is left.
Dianne wanted that first line to stand alone so we would not treat the rest like an allegory about getting old. It is a summons. It is personal. It is dated with a clock we cannot see.
Youth is any hour you still have enough life in you to choose. The evil days are the days when delight dries up in the body, in the culture, in the house, and in the story you were told to trust.
Solomon is writing after he tasted every delight on the table and found the plate empty. Dianne is listening with a body already in those days. Both of them point at the same command. Remember Him while remembering is still a decision.
“This is key for you. Then you pray about it and God will give you the word. This is what we’re talking about! You learn things when you are young. Then you get to an age and now they make sense. Now we see how we were cheated. Because it was vanity. It doesn’t go anywhere.”
When we were young we learned a script that sounded like the only way to live: go to school, get a job, start a family, take out loans so you can get more. Dianne said it out loud so we could hear how pretty the trap is.
Once you have walked far enough to see a grave, you can tell that script does not go anywhere. You can sit on millions and still be empty. You can call it success and still refuse the reason you were given a body.
“What good would it do to sit on millions of dollars and say I’m retired? What good would that do when you need to be helping other people? When we’re younger it sounds good retire at fifty, sit and have tea and do nothing.
But that’s the youth. Now we’re at the point where we see that vanity. That is not what we are on this earth to do. We’re not on the earth to acquire a few things and sit there and go into our graves. What good is that? That’s Satan.”
That is the teaching she put in my hands. The things we learned have to be looked at again in the light. What used to look like wisdom can turn out to be vanity once you have lived long enough to see where it ends. We were not given a body so we could collect a life and sit down on it. We were given a body so we could remember our Creator and help the people still here with us.
“Before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened, and the clouds return after the rain.”
Commentators will tell you this is eyesight failing and storms that never quite clear. That reading is true in a body. Dianne heard more…
“We’re watching these go dark. Darkness could mean many things. It could be literal darkness. Things they told us were real they’re just lies. And now here we are!”
Dianne heard more than old eyes failing. She heard a world going dim on purpose. People were being handed stories and told they were daylight, and she said those stories were lies. That is why this verse mattered to her. The lights are not only going out in a body. They are going out in the culture around the body. And now, she said, here we are.
“In the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men stoop, the grinders cease because they are few, and those who look through the windows grow dim.”
Dianne treated it as a warning about the house we are living in right now. The people who should have guarded it are trembling. The ones who should have stood upright are bent.
The work of telling the truth gets quiet because there are not enough people left to keep the mill turning. She said we are watching it. She said it so we would remember the Creator while there is still a door open.
“And one shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low.”
Remember when I told you about the bird omen before Dianne died?
It pecked on the window for days. I did not treat it like a cute farm visitor. I have had bird omens before other losses and I knew in my gut what it was doing. It had come to tell me she was going to die.
After she was gone a bird came back. I saw it, videoed it, blogged about it and still I did not put the two visits together. I was in the thick of grief and the work of missing her.
I did not even remember that Ecclesiastes 12 mentions a bird until I was writing this. We had read the chapter together. She did not stop me on the bird. I stopped on it later with the page open in front of me and the verse rose up:
And one shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low.
I cannot read that verse now without the sound of that beak on the window. Heaven used a small bird to say a large thing. It said she was leaving. Then it said she was ok. And later the Word showed me it had been on the page the whole time. The beautiful poetry of it all guts me looking back at it now.
“Because man goes to his eternal home, and the mourners go about the streets.”
There it is before the silver cord is even named! You are going to an eternal home. The street will have walkers in black. The house you are packing is not the last house. Dianne already knew which direction she was facing when I read that. I was still trying to keep her in this one.
“Remember Him before the silver cord is broken, and the golden bowl is crushed, the pitcher by the well is shattered, and the wheel at the cistern is crushed.”
The vision that became a friendship…
I need to give you a bit of backstory. Long before this phone call the Lord showed me a vision of clay jar tipped over on its side. It was cracked open. Light was coming through the break. There was a key inside.
I did not have a theology for it. I only knew I was supposed to TELL Dianne about the vision. That was the beginning of our friendship. Thank you God for this vision!
“Oh my God, Dianne! Do you remember the vision? The very first one I was told to give you. It was simple. The clay jar broken. Tipped over onto its side. And it was broken. Do you remember that? I wonder if that ties into this.”
She didn’t skip a beat before she said:
“It does. It does. It does.”
Then she told me what the break means.
“Because when that happens, you can’t go back. It’s over. Every chance you had to make your decisions is gone. So hopefully you made it a good one because then all else is vanity.”
She was already living on the edge of that sentence. The silver cord is the tether. Dianne saw it while she was fighting for her life. A cord of silver running between the spirit and the clay (body). As long as it holds you can still choose, still pray, still repent, still love, still warn, still teach.
She says:
“Remember Him before you’re dead.”
“Remember God before all that time is up. When that time is up, you’re done.”
“Whatever decisions you made prior to that, make sure they’re good ones. Because when that time’s up, it’s up.”
“So when your time’s up, it’s up. What did you do with it? That’s what God’s going to ask. You had all these opportunities. You had all this stuff. What did you do?”
“And He’ll tell a lot of people, Depart from Me. I never knew you.”
The golden bowl, she said, is gold tried in the fire. It is what you did with the opportunity you were given. You either let the fire prove what was in the bowl or you only ever drank from it. I am still asking the Lord to show me more of that picture. What I can see already is Dianne. She kept teaching while the fire was on her.
The pitcher exists to go to the water and come back full. When it shatters at the well the errand is over. You cannot haul living water in a shattered jar.
The key in my vision still matters to me. Something is released in the breaking. Something is unlocked that the intact pot was holding.
I do not pretend I understand it all. I know the Lord gave me that image before I had language and I know Ecclesiastes named the pitcher when Dianne and I finally sat inside the chapter together. The key was in the place that broke.
The wheel is the last picture in the set, and it is the one that makes the others final. The silver cord is the tether. The golden bowl is what you did with the gift. The pitcher is the body that kept going back to the water. The wheel is the work itself. It is how you kept drawing life up from the deep, breath after breath, choice after choice, trip after trip to the well.
When the wheel breaks you are out of a way to draw. The cistern may still hold water but you cannot pull that water up anymore. The coming and going is finished. The days of reaching for another chance in this body are over.
That is why Dianne kept saying before. Before the wheel stops. While you can still bring something up from the well and give it away.
Then the Teacher says the thing that happened in front of my life.
“Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.”
In the recording we read the end of the chapter the part about the wise man who taught the people knowledge, who pondered and searched out and arranged many sayings, who looked for words of truth. It just did not click because I was reading the wrong translation.
The Bible in my hand said ‘preacher’. I read it to her that way, and we moved on. We were locked on the silver cord, and what I needed to tell you guys.
After she was gone I went looking, because those verses would not let me go. The Hebrew is Qoheleth, the one who gathers the assembly. The verb is limmad. He taught. He was a teacher!
If I had read ‘teacher’ to her that day, I think it would have landed like a stone in the well. Instead we glossed it and kept our eyes on the silver cord. I only saw her name in that line after she was gone.
The wise teacher teaching many truths. That was Dianne! I just did not have the right word in my mouth while she could still hear it.
A preacher can fill a room with words. A teacher forms a soul. Dianne gathered. Dianne formed. Dianne stopped my reading so a sentence could get into the bone. She assembled people around pressing into the kingdom of God and then she taught them while her own pitcher was cracking.
“In addition to being wise, the Teacher still taught the people knowledge. He pondered and searched out and arranged many proverbs. The Teacher sought to find delightful words, and to write words of truth correctly.”
He was wise, and he still taught. He pondered. He hunted. He set sayings in order so other people could hold them. He looked for words that would sit right in the mouth and still be true. That was her kind of work. Even the recording is that work. A dying woman arranged the truth so I could carry it in the right order.
“The words of the wise are like goads, and like well driven nails; they are given by one Shepherd.”
A goad pokes an ox so the ox will move. A nail stays in the beam after the hammer is gone. Both hurt a little. Both are mercy. Both come from one Shepherd, which means the real Teacher behind the human teacher is God Himself. When Dianne said stop right there, that was a goad. When she said when your time’s up, it’s up, that was a nail. I can still feel where it went in.
“And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.”
Solomon knew the library could become another vanity. Dianne heard that too. “Nothing has changed,” she said. “It hasn’t.” We can drown in words and still refuse the first sentence of the chapter.
We did not linger there together as long as I wanted. In the recording we stayed nearest the cord. After she was gone I read the rest of the chapter alone and the words about the wise teacher teaching many truths dropped me to the floor. I cried because the page had been saying her name while she was still here and I missed it.
That is how the Lord writes in life. He lets you hold a sentence and then He turns it over.
We came to the last two verses and she would not let me close the book like a person who had only finished a reading.
“The conclusion, when all has been heard: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.”
I said, “That’s it.”
And Dianne lit up.
up.
“Oh! You’ve got to put that in this article. And you’ve got to let people see this. Break it down however the Lord leads your heart.”
“This is exactly where we are.”
“We are in it!”
We ARE in it! These ARE the days! The evil days. The darkened lights. The trembling watchmen. The low mill. The terrors in the way. The Bible, she said, has not been fulfilled except for some little piece. “We are right now in the process of fulfilling this. Many things are coming to a head. And this is one of them.”
Dianne could see it from the edge of a life and she still had enough authority in her voice to tell me to quit treating the chapter like a warning for somebody else.
Then she left the lesson the way a teacher leaves a last assignment.
“Silver cord cannot be cut yet. Silver cord. Pray for that. Silver cord. Pray for us.”
Tell the people. They have to know! Make them understand! This is the part she kept putting in my hands.
So what do I tell the people, Lord?
Tell them it is about God and you. Remember your Creator while you can still choose. The first sentence of the chapter is the door.
Tell them the things we learned have to be judged. A lot of what we call wisdom was vanity dressed up as a plan. We are not on the earth to acquire a few things and sit there and go into our graves. Help people. Use the time.
Tell them we are in it. These are the days when lights go dark and lies get sold as truth and the watchmen tremble. Do not wait for a more official hour to start remembering God. Dianne already said, this is exactly where we are!
Tell them the cord can break. When your time is up, it is up! What did you do with it? That is what God is going to ask. Dying will not invent a relationship you refused while the cord was intact.
Tell them to fear God and keep His commandments. That applies to every person. Every hidden thing is coming into the light. That is why Dianne said put it in the article and let people see it.
Tell them to pray for the silver cord. Hers. Yours. Mine. The people we love. Pray while the tether still holds!
That is the assignment. That is what “tell the people” means.
The lesson she left us is how to die. Remember your Creator while you can still choose. Use the time. Help people. Stay ready, because when the cord breaks you do not get another hour in this body. Then you go home to God.
As Dianne says, “When your time is up, it is up!” What did you do with it?
We know what Dianne did!
She PRESSED INTO THE KINGDOM OF GOD! She PRESSED! PRESSED!! PRESSED!!!
Tammi ~ River of Life Farmstead
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