Reflecting on a Life Worth Living

Reflecting on a life worth living.
1 Chronicles 29:10-20
“Both riches and honor come from You, and You rule over all, and in Your hand is power and might; and it lies in Your hand to make great and to strengthen everyone.”

When we are nearing the end of our lives, what will we reflect upon? What will we look back and see as we think of all the years gone by? How will we want to be remembered, and what will we want to highlight? In Chronicles 29, we find the last words of David recorded for us before the end of his life. He is now passing the scepter of leadership to his son, Solomon, and thus before the assembly, he gives his final address to the people. However, before he passes the leadership to Solomon, David desires to do one more official act. He wants to take an offering for the building of the temple. While David had been forbidden by God to build a temple for God, he still set about the task of gathering all the materials and resources needed to construct a temple before God. After the offering was collected and the people gathered in celebration, David provided his final speech.

As we expect, it is a speech that reflects both the past and anticipates the future. He anticipates the succession of Solomon by praying that God would give Solomon “a perfect heart to keep Your commandments, Your testimonies, and Your statutes, and to do them all, and to build the temple, for which I have made provision.” This is a beautiful prayer of a father that his son would walk in obedience to God and further the work of God’s kingdom. It is a model for us as we pray for our children that they would remain faithful to the word of God and continue the legacy of advancing God's redemptive program through the church.

However, in these verses, we see David’s reflection upon his life. David recognizes that all the things he has accomplished, all the wealth he has gathered, and all the blessings they have enjoyed have come from the gracious work of God. David does not look back in pride at his accomplishments. Instead, he looks back with a sense of wonderment at God's sovereign working in his life. He sees all the works of God as the movement of God to establish his kingdom and his presence on earth as represented in the temple. David did not even take credit for gathering all the materials needed for the temple. After spending his life collecting the material for the temple, David recognizes that it was a result of God’s sovereign working in his life (vs. 16). Our life is a mere shadow, but meaning, purpose, and hope come from God. As David reflects, he sees his most significant accomplishment, not in the victories on the battlefield, not in the establishment of a kingdom, but in the collection of the metals (gold, silver, bronze, iron), the precious stones, and the wood to construct the temple. However, all these accomplishments he summarizes as “it is from Your hand, and all is Yours” (16). For David, his life could be summarized in five words, “It was all from God!”  

When we look back at our life, what do we see? Do we see all our achievements, or do we see the fingerprint of God on everything we did? If not, change the narrative by making the last years, months, days, hours, and second all about God. Make him the focal point; in the end, that will be remembered, for our most significant accomplishments in life are not the things we have done but how we finished.