Today is a detour from the Gospel of Saint Luke. Reading Luke one chapter at a time and trying to break it down into thoughts, I needed a break and redirection. For this, I went back to one of my favorite books in the Old Testament: Ecclesiastes.
For Ecclesiastes, I’m not breaking down each chapter but speaking of the book and its message as a whole. Ecclesiastes, for me, is a book that always helps to put life back into into perspective. It is a book of wisdom, philosophy, and first-hand observation by King Solomon in his lifetime. In the millennia since, I do not believe anything in its fundamental perspectives and observations of life and world’s condition have changed with regard to the human experience. To me, this is sign to Solomon’s discerning and communicating threads of eternal truth.
In his telling, Solomon speaks of seeking to go about the world to gain Wisdom, and the greater effort he puts into attaining and finding Wisdom, he more he sees nearly all of man’s endeavors as actions in vanity. “Vanity of vanities…all is vanity,” he speaks and shows again and again.
The more Solomon searches for answers, the more he sees—for all things in this world, there is a time and place. In one chapter he will curse one extreme and hold high it’s opposite; and shortly after, his curses and praises will change. Solomon sees that the world is not inherently just, and when it is not; we are not to curse the design of the system but accept that such is the nature of the world, and we may still love God and enjoy our lot despite our perceived having been done or given wrong.
The more Solomon seeks, the less he understands the reason to any of God’s why. In the reason for man’s toil and all the strain and internally projected purpose man places on his existence, Solomon again sees no reason why any of it should be. The world will little and short remember us when we are passed. What we perceive as great achievements are not enduring. In time, it all returns to nothing.
In the end, the resolution and perspective that gives Solomon peace is not the answers of a great and all-knowing wisdom, but acceptance of the unknows and capriciousness of fate and our lot in this world. To Solomon—who rode the highest highs and lowest lows and full excesses and experiences life could offer—the best answer he could make from his pursuit of Wisdom in the act of living and seeking is to love and fear God, honor his commandments, and to love and be grateful in this moment of life we are given.
To me, Ecclesiastes, read in full, is one my favorite books for a grounding perspective for life an the world, and a way to balance, contain, and measure the mostly nonsense/vanity we as mankind promote everywhere around us in the rush and haste of the immanent world, seeking to give our small moment of life a greater purpose and weight than it deserves. When vanity falls away, we can better appreciate all of God’s illogical gift to us that is this life and the small moment we exist in the great scope of Creation preceding and following infinitely outside our moment of lived existence.
Life is short. Life is good—even when unfair, unjust, illogical, beyond our ordering of thought. Enjoy it; and respect God—even when we do not understand why anything should be.