Read Ecclesiastes 7:1–8
A good name is better than fine perfume, and the day of death better than the day of birth. Ecclesiastes 7:1

Solomon was not contrasting birth and death. He was contrasting two significant days in human experience: the day a person is given a name and the day when that name shows up in the obituary column. The life lived between those two events will determine whether that name leaves behind a lovely fragrance or a foul stench.

Solomon is advising us to look death in the face and learn from it. He is not saying that we should obsess over death. But there is a danger that we may try to avoid confrontations with the reality of death and, as a result, not take life as seriously as we should. “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Ps. 90:12).

The late Dr. Ernest Becker wrote in his Pulitzer Prize–winning book The Denial of Death: “The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity—activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man.”3 King Solomon knew this truth centuries ago!

Something to Ponder
In what ways does thinking about death help you take life more seriously?
3 Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (New York: Free Press, 1975), ix.