“Be not over much wicked, neither be thou foolish: why shouldest thou die before thy time?” (Ecclesiastes 7:17).

In the mysteries of God’s eternal counsels, He has apparently established a set span of human life on Earth for each soul created by Him. There is “a time to be born, and a time to die” (Ecclesiastes 3:2). Why some die in infancy (or even before birth) and some in old age is not for us to understand now (I Corinthians 13:12).

It is wonderful to know that our times are in His hand from conception to death and into eternity. The first mention of “time” in the Bible is when God promised to send Isaac to Abraham and Sarah, even before he was conceived: “I will certainly return unto thee according to the time of life, and, lo, Sarah thy wife shall have a son. . . . At the time appointed I will return unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son” (Genesis 18:10,14). Then, later, “Sarah conceived, and bare Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him” (Genesis 21:2). The “time of life” was God’s “set time,” not Abraham’s.

And so it is with the time of death. As long as sin is in the world, death must be in the world, for all have sinned (Romans 5:12). Nevertheless, to a Christian, the time of death is only an entrance to a better life: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21). “We are confident . . . willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord” (II Corinthians 5:8). “A good name is better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one’s birth” (Ecclesiastes 7:1).

However, the “time to die,” like the time of life, is in God’s hands, not ours. Life is a precious gift of God, to be carefully nourished and preserved, insofar as we can do so within His revealed will, but when His time for death does arrive, that also—in His hand—is good. HMM