When the Evil Days Come

What becomes of faith when eternity draws nearer but God seems farther away?

There is a strange warning tucked near the end of Ecclesiastes.

Don't let the excitement of youth cause you to forget your Creator. Honor him in your youth before you grow old and say, "Life is not pleasant anymore." (Ecclesiastes 12:1)

I used to hear that primarily as advice for young people.

Don't waste your youth. Don't spend your strongest years chasing things that cannot satisfy you. Don't wait until you are old to think seriously about God.

There is wisdom in that.

But lately I have been hearing something else in those words.

I have been thinking about the people who have already reached the other side of the warning.

What about those days?

What about when the evil days have come?

What about when life gets a little harder every morning? When getting out of bed hurts. When names disappear from your Christmas card list because the people attached to them are gone. When your parents are memories. When siblings begin dying. When friends you once laughed with become photographs.

What about when the world keeps changing until you sometimes feel like a visitor in a place that used to be home?

And what happens when something even more frightening begins to happen?

Eternity gets closer, but faith seems farther away.

We don't talk about that very much.

Maybe we should.

The Evil Days Ecclesiastes Warned About

The older translations of Ecclesiastes call them evil days.

That sounds almost sinister to modern ears, but the idea is broader than moral evil. These are difficult days. Days of adversity. Days when life becomes heavy.

And Ecclesiastes does something remarkable.

It doesn't romanticize them.

There is no sentimental picture of an elderly believer sitting peacefully beside a window, Bible open, completely certain about everything that comes next.

Instead, Ecclesiastes 12 gives us poetry about deterioration.

The sun and moon grow dim. The guards of the house tremble. Strong men stoop. The grinders cease because they are few. Those looking through the windows see dimly.

The imagery continues until finally:

For then the dust will return to the earth, and the spirit will return to God who gave it. (Ecclesiastes 12:7)

This is Scripture looking directly at human mortality without blinking.

The body wears out.

Strength disappears.

Desire fades.

Death approaches.

There is no command here to pretend otherwise.

And there is something merciful about that.

Because sometimes religious culture has taught us to sanitize suffering. We feel obligated to attach something cheerful to every sorrow.

Someone dies and immediately we talk about heaven.

Someone receives terrible news and we rush toward God's plan.

Someone admits they are frightened and we give them a verse before we have even listened to the fear.

But Ecclesiastes doesn't rush.

It allows the darkness to be dark.

Perhaps we should too.

Grief Accumulates With Age

There is another burden of growing older that isn't mentioned directly in aching joints or failing eyesight.

Grief accumulates.

When we are young, death usually visits from the outside.

A grandparent dies. Someone in the community dies. Perhaps tragedy comes unexpectedly close.

But eventually death begins moving through your own generation.

Friends.

Cousins.

Brothers.

Sisters.

Spouses.

People who knew you when you were young.

People who remember stories nobody else remembers.

People who knew versions of you that no longer exist.

Their absence changes something.

Eventually you realize that your memories contain more people than your present life does.

And grief does not always leave when the funeral ends.

It settles into us.

One loss joins another.

Then another.

We learn to live around the empty spaces, but the spaces remain.

There are days when the accumulated weight of those absences becomes difficult to explain to someone who hasn't lived long enough to carry them.

This isn't necessarily despair.

It is simply what happens when you have loved people for a long time.

Love leaves vacancies.

When Faith Gets Tired Too

We expect the body to grow tired.

We don't expect belief to.

There is a quiet assumption in much of our religious culture that faith should become progressively easier.

Surely after thirty or forty or fifty years of following Jesus, doubts should disappear.

Surely prayer should become effortless.

Surely someone approaching eternity should feel increasingly certain about it.

Sometimes that happens.

Sometimes it doesn't.

Sometimes the questions become harder.

You have watched people pray desperately for things that never happened.

You have buried people who seemed far too young to die.

You have watched cruel people prosper.

You have seen kind people broken.

You have watched churches hurt people in God's name.

You have watched believers become consumed by anger, politics, money, status, and power.

You have prayed prayers that seemed to disappear into silence.

And somewhere along the road, the tidy answers that once satisfied you stopped working.

That doesn't necessarily mean you have abandoned God.

It may simply mean you have lived long enough to discover how mysterious God actually is.

But mystery can become exhausting.

Especially when you are tired already.

There may come a morning when you discover that the faith you carried confidently at thirty feels heavier at seventy.

And perhaps you feel ashamed of that.

You shouldn't.

Scripture is filled with people asking God where He went.

O LORD, how long will you forget me? Forever? How long will you look the other way? (Psalm 13:1)

That isn't unbelief speaking.

That is belief speaking from inside darkness.

And one of the psalmists prayed the prayer of the aging believer out loud, so the rest of us would know we are allowed to:

And now, in my old age, don't set me aside. Don't abandon me when my strength is failing. (Psalm 71:9)

That prayer made it into the Bible.

Which means God was not offended by it.

When Eternity Gets Closer and Faith Feels Farther Away

Youth naturally looks toward beginnings.

First love.

First home.

Children.

Careers.

Journeys.

Possibilities.

There is always something somewhere beyond the horizon.

Eventually the horizon changes.

There are fewer firsts.

More lasts.

The last time you see someone.

The last long trip.

The last house.

The last dog.

Perhaps eventually the last time you drive.

The last Christmas in a familiar place.

The last ordinary afternoon with someone you love, although you don't know it is the last while it is happening.

And somewhere in those years, death stops being philosophical.

It becomes personal.

It is coming for you too.

We would like to imagine that this realization automatically produces serenity.

Sometimes it produces fear.

Even for believers.

Even after decades of prayer.

Even after thousands of Sundays.

Even after reading the Bible from cover to cover.

The heart looks toward the place where the road disappears and cannot see what lies beyond it.

And suddenly eternity, which once seemed like a beautiful theological idea, becomes an approaching reality.

Eternity is closer, yet faith can feel farther away.

There is no shame in admitting that.

There may even be something sacred about finally telling the truth.

Remember

Which brings us back to the strange word Ecclesiastes uses.

Remember.

Don't let the excitement of youth cause you to forget your Creator. (Ecclesiastes 12:1)

Notice what it doesn't say.

Understand your Creator.

Explain your Creator.

Prove your Creator.

Feel your Creator.

It says:

Remember.

That becomes a very different instruction when the evil days have arrived.

Remember.

Remember the prayers that were answered.

Remember the ones that weren't and somehow you survived anyway.

Remember the unexpected kindness.

Remember the doors that opened.

Remember the doors that closed and eventually saved you from roads you were never meant to travel.

Remember the people God placed beside you.

Remember the moments when grace arrived without explanation.

Remember Jesus.

Not the machinery built around Him.

Not the arguments people have constructed about Him.

Not the political movements claiming His authority.

Not the institutions that disappointed you.

Jesus.

Remember the One who touched lepers.

Remember the One who ate with people religion had discarded.

Remember the One who wept beside a grave.

Remember the One who welcomed frightened people and tired people and doubting people.

Remember the One who said:

Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:28)

Maybe there comes a season when remembering is itself an act of faith.

Faith May Become Very Small

Perhaps we have made faith unnecessarily heroic.

We imagine it as certainty.

Confidence.

Courage.

Conviction.

But Jesus once compared faith to a mustard seed.

Small.

Almost ridiculously small.

Maybe faith sometimes becomes that small again near the end.

A whispered prayer.

A remembered verse.

The name of Jesus spoken into a dark room.

A trembling hand reaching toward something it cannot see.

Maybe sometimes faith sounds like:

God, I don't know anymore. But I'm still here.

That may be one of the purest prayers a person can pray.

Because there is nothing left to perform.

Nothing left to prove.

No audience.

No spiritual reputation to protect.

Just an aging human being standing before the mystery of God.

And perhaps that is enough.

The Shepherd in the Dark

Psalm 23 contains one of Scripture's most familiar images:

Even when I walk through the darkest valley, I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me. (Psalm 23:4)

Notice what the Shepherd does not promise.

He does not promise there will be no valley.

He does not promise that the valley will become bright.

He does not explain why the valley exists.

He doesn't even show the sheep what lies beyond it.

He simply remains.

You are close beside me.

Perhaps that is what we need most when the evil days come.

Not explanations.

Presence.

And when we cannot sense God's presence, perhaps we borrow the memory of it.

We remember.

We remember the Shepherd who brought us this far.

We remember the valleys already crossed.

We remember the tables prepared in difficult places.

We remember goodness and unfailing love following us through years when we did not recognize them.

And then we take another step.

Not because we can see the destination.

Because we know the Shepherd.

When You Can No Longer Hold On: Faith and Dementia

There may eventually come a day when even remembering becomes difficult.

The mind weakens along with the body.

Prayer becomes fragmented.

Words disappear.

Names disappear.

Perhaps even our carefully constructed theology disappears.

What then?

This may be where grace becomes most beautiful.

Because our hope was never ultimately grounded in our ability to hold onto God.

It was grounded in God's refusal to abandon us.

Jesus described Himself as the shepherd who knows His sheep and gives them eternal life:

No one can snatch them away from me. (John 10:28)

Not even age.

Not grief.

Not dementia.

Not doubt.

Not exhaustion.

Not the frightening silence that sometimes settles over the final stretch of the road.

Not even death.

There may come a time when your grip becomes weak.

There may come a time when your prayers become confused.

There may come a time when the beliefs you once articulated confidently become little more than a name whispered into darkness.

Jesus.

And perhaps that is enough.

Because the final hope of the believer is not:

I held tightly enough.

It is:

The Shepherd never let go.

What to Do When the Evil Days Come

So what do we do when those days arrive?

Perhaps we stop pretending they haven't.

We grieve what deserves grieving.

We admit what hurts.

We speak our doubts without shame.

We allow ourselves to miss the people who are gone.

We stop demanding that every sorrow immediately teach us something.

We remember our Creator.

We remember Jesus.

And when tomorrow looks darker than yesterday, we walk the small piece of road that is actually beneath our feet.

One day.

One prayer.

One breath.

One remembered mercy.

One more step beside the Shepherd.

There may be darkness ahead.

Ecclesiastes never promised otherwise.

But darkness is not the same thing as abandonment.

And when our eyes can no longer find the light, perhaps faith becomes something quieter than certainty.

Perhaps it becomes trust that the One we cannot see can still see us.

So when the evil days come, and the heart looks down the road and trembles, we do not have to manufacture courage.

We do not have to pretend we aren't afraid.

We do not even have to understand.

We remember.

And we keep walking.

Because even when our grip weakens, the Shepherd's does not.

Questions People Ask About Faith in the Evil Days

What does "evil days" mean in Ecclesiastes 12:1?

The Hebrew word behind "evil" in Ecclesiastes 12:1 means distress, hardship, or misery rather than moral wickedness. The NLT renders the idea as the years when you "say, 'Life is not pleasant anymore.'" Ecclesiastes 12:2–7 then describes those days with poetry about the body wearing out: dimming eyes, trembling limbs, failing teeth, and finally the return of dust to the earth. The "evil days" are the hard days of old age, not a season of wrongdoing.

Is Ecclesiastes 12:1 only for young people?

It is addressed to the young, but its central instruction is "remember your Creator," and that word does not expire. The verse tells us to remember God before the hard days come; it does not say remembering stops working once they arrive. For an aging believer, remembering the prayers answered, the valleys already crossed, and the person of Jesus can become the whole shape of faith.

Is it normal for a lifelong Christian's faith to feel weaker in old age?

Yes. Decades of unanswered prayer, accumulated grief, and disappointment with churches can make faith feel heavier at seventy than it did at thirty. Scripture does not treat this as failure. Psalm 13 asks God how long He will look the other way, and Psalm 71 is the prayer of an old believer asking not to be abandoned when strength fails. A tired faith is still faith.

Is it wrong for a believer to be afraid of death?

No. Fear of death is not the same as unbelief. Psalm 23 does not promise that the valley will be bright or explained, only that the Shepherd stays close inside it. A believer can be frightened of the road ahead and still be held. The Christian hope is not the absence of fear but the presence of the Shepherd within it.

What happens to a person's faith when dementia takes their memory and their prayers?

Jesus said of His sheep, "No one can snatch them away from me" (John 10:28). Salvation was never grounded in a believer's ability to keep hold of God but in God's refusal to let go of the believer. When the mind can no longer form prayers or recall doctrine, the Shepherd's grip does not weaken. A person with dementia is not less held than they were before.

How can I support an aging parent whose faith seems to be fading?

Listen before you quote. Ecclesiastes lets the darkness be dark, and you can too. Let them name the losses and the doubts without rushing to fix them. Help them remember rather than argue: familiar verses, old hymns, answered prayers, the stories of God's faithfulness in their own life. Remind them, gently, that the Shepherd is holding them even when they cannot feel it, and that this was always how it worked.