1 Chronicles 29:26-30: in context

The Chronicler closes the story of David with a summary. He reigned over all Israel forty years, seven in Hebron and thirty-three in Jerusalem. And then the epitaph: he died at a good old age, full of days, riches, and honor, and Solomon his son reigned in his place. His acts, first and last, are written in the records of the seers Samuel, Nathan, and Gad.

The phrase to sit with is the epitaph: he died at a good old age, full of days, riches, and honor. It is worth setting beside the death of Jehoram a few generations later, who departed with no one's regret. David, for all his grievous failures, adultery, murder, a broken family, is remembered as a man who died full, satisfied, having lived a long life that had a weight and a completeness to it. Full of days does not mean a life without sorrow; David's was full of sorrow. It means a life lived to the full, all the way through, with God at its center despite the failures, arriving at the end not empty but full. There is a difference between a long life and a full one, and David's was full, of years, yes, but also of God's mercy, of repentance and restoration after his sins, of a heart that kept returning to the Lord. The measure of the ending is not the absence of failure but the presence of God through it all, so that a man who sinned deeply still died full, not because he was perfect but because his life had been anchored in the God he kept coming back to. It is possible to die full of days even after a life with real failures in it, if God has been the center.

Am I living toward a full life, one anchored in God through both its joys and its failures, so that I might die full of days like David rather than empty and unregretted?