Ecclesiastes 7 contains two particular sharp and unusual bits of insight that reflect a preference for postmortem analysis than we are perhaps used to in contemporary society. Ecclesiastes 7:1 reads: “A good name is better than precious ointment, and the day of death than the day of one’s birth.” A few verses later, in Ecclesiastes 7:8, we read: “The end of a thing is better than its beginning; the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.” Both of these verses share at least two qualities. The first is a parallelism that combines a reflection on the ends of a life or another matter along with another important quality like honor or patience, and the second is a preference for endings rather than beginnings, possibly related to the greater insight one can gain after something has been completed.

When we reflect on birth, or the very young in general, there is a lot of hope and possibility. Indeed, we cannot fairly judge the very young merely on their deeds, since babies cannot do much of anything, and are rather dependent creatures of limited ability to communicate or act. And yet they have cute smiles and a lot of potential outcomes of life, and so they often fill us with hope and certain instincts to protect them as best as we are able from the harm that can often come to the innocent and vulnerable in this world. Although children have their own natures and proclivities in certain areas even from birth (or before birth), we tend to think of them as a tabula rasa, a blank slate, and every step along the way of the lives of a little one we see their character and their destiny put into place, the magnitude of possibilities shrunken by their own choices and the actions of others towards them, from their involvement with God and others, and vice versa.

It is a different matter when it comes to looking at the end of a life, whether that life is of a person or a fictitious personage like an institution or a state. All the choices in life have been made, all the options have been closed off except the ones that have been taken, and one is faced only with the reality of judgment on one’s deeds and whether they have been good or evil. In a way this is better, if one means better as referring to the preference of reality to that which is merely possibility. Yet if it is more certain and more sure, it is also more heavily determined. After one’s decisions have been made the options that one could have taken earlier are foreclosed. Indeed, so long as one lives, one can repent, but at the same time one can also fall away. It is only after death that one’s decisions can be taken as a whole without the chance of reversal either for better or for worse, and at that point what remains to be done is to tally up the score and to await the verdict of our heavenly judge. And that makes our salvation sure, and all the more appreciated.

What insight do we gain after someone or something is gone? Sometimes we realize that we do not realize how good we had life until the life we knew was gone. Sometimes we realize that individual people mattered far more than we might have realized, that a single life made a huge difference in the fate of our world, for better or for ill. Some small choices made in a moment can reverberate through years, and generations even. It is therefore all the more important that we take heed to our choices, for we should all know just how easily we stumble in our own lives, and how lasting the effects are of our mistakes at times. Let us hope that the verdict of our Creator is more kind than the verdict of history on certain errors and faults. There is only so much we can do on our own to live lives that are successful and of a benefit to the world, and we too will face judgment when we are gone. Let us hope that judgment is a kind one, and that with our modest strength we are able to make a difference on the world around us for the better, as best as we were able.