Ecclesiastes: Fatalism, Flux, and Figs

(Introduction - "What is the Good Life?")

( Ecclesiastes 1 - "Hebel Happens")
(Ecclesiastes 2 - "He Who Dies with the Most Hebel Wins!")

Ecclesiastes 3:1-11

     I think I have nailed the problem: Everything is in flux, everything changes, and it’s unpredictable.  And I can’t stand unpredictability.

   I understand we must have change: One day we are born, one day we die.  One day we kill, another day we heal. One day we celebrate, another day we watch Michigan football.  One day we make war, one day we find peace. One day we marry, the next day we begin to shop. 

     There is a season for everything.  Fine. Why can’t I know what season is coming up, or why I just had the season I did?  Is it too much to ask for a “heads up”?  I know my chariot has to break down….I know I’ll probably get sick from green figs…my wives and I will disagree…my son will one day want to be king…I just want to know when.  I want to be able to prepare. I WANT PREDICTABILITY!!!!!

   God, in my clearer moments, I know you plan the right seasons of life for the right time – that predictability I complained about in nature makes that possible.  I get it.  I just wonder why you can’t show us what you have planned from the beginning to the end. The seasons of the year are predictable; why not life?

Ecclesiastes: "He Who Dies With the Most Hebel Wins"

(Introduction - "What is the Good Life?")

( Ecclesiastes 1 - "Hebel Happens")

(Ecclesiastes 2:9-11, 21st Century Version)

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    Okay, I gave it my best shot.  I am really trying to find a way to make this life meaningful.

     You would not believe how much I studied.  I tried to learn as much as I could about as many things as I could find.  It was like chasing the wind.  I never quite caught it, and even if I would have, what’s the point?  

    I hired all the best comedians, They were stupid. Nothing is funny anymore.  A man can walk into a bar only so many times.  Good humor is based in reality, and reality is hebel. (Have I said that already?)

     Did I mention I drank a lot,  and it wasn’t the cheap stuff.  I didn’t just do it to get drunk; I did it purposefully, as an experiment to see if happiness could be found at the bottom of a bottle.  I found nothing other than the occasional worm.  

    I built a ton of stuff.  I had over 100,000 people working on just the temple and my palace.  I built vineyards and gardens and blah blah blah.  One day they will all crumble, thanks to that sun and rain I mentioned last time.

    So I went shopping, and let me tell you, I have wives who can teach me how to shop like you would not believe.  I bought everything I wanted.  Now, even the singing fish on my wall is getting old.

    I hired musicians and started Solomonpalooza.  It was boring.  There is only so much you can do with a harp and a zither.  And nobody had a bass player, so who was I supposed to pay for the pizza?

Ecclesiastes: "Hebel Happens"

(Read Part One - "Ecclesiastes: What Is The Good Life?")

(From Ecclesiastes, Chapter 1)

Okay, God, here we go. This is going to be very different from that song I wrote about love and those pithy Proverbs I compiled.  I was younger then.  A lot of life has flowed under the bridge since then.  This time the subject's going to be tougher, but I am committed to being honest  in what I write.  It’s not like anyone else is going to read it.

Here is my opinion about life:  everything I see around me is meaningless and insignificant.  I see the vapor rising from the lake in the morning, and I think, “That’s what life is like.”  It’s worthless. The best Hebrew word I know to do it justice is  hebel.   Everything we do in life vaporizes like that mist under this hot, miserable sun.  We are like mice in a wheel; we run in circles for no apparent reason. I’m sure it’s entertaining to watch, but it’s pointless. All in all, it’s just another brick in my palace wall. I am thinking of a new bumper sticker for my chariot: “Hebel happens.” Or something like that.

Honestly, looking at the world you made doesn’t help.  The earth, the sun, the wind, the rivers - they're beautiful, but it’s just the same thing over and over again: the earth spins, the sun rises, the wind blows, the rivers run to the ocean. Then they do it again. Sure, it’s pretty, but it’s pointless. I don’t find this encouraging.

I am afraid that’s my life too – pretty but pointless.

Ecclesiastes: What is the Good Life?

When I went to the Smokeys last summer, everyone asked me the same question when I got home: “Did you have a good vacation?”

While on the trip, a friend asked me a very poignant question: “I am trying my best to live for Christ. Why do I feel so restless and unfulfilled?  What am I not happy? How do I find the good life?” 

The good vacation.  The good life.

When I got home, I read this in a Newsweek article called "My Transoceanic Midlife Crisis." 

"‘I pared life down to the basics to find out what really mattered to me, to find out what was left when I was defined by who I was, not by what I owned or who I was with. I was letting go of everything that had represented security—my job, my husband, my home, my possessions…It was liberating, but I was like a carpenter with a brand-new set of tools and no wood to work on. I needed a project.’ Sailing won out over ‘less extreme options, such as an organic baking business and planning a motorcycle trip…’

Everyone wants the good life.

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This search for meaning is not a new search.  The book of Ecclesiastes is an often overlooked and seldom discussed book, but it has tremendous relevance for today.

Ecclesiastes was written by Solomon, whose wisdom and wealth was perhaps unparalleled in ancient times.  He is responsible for three books in the Old Testament: The Song of Songs, written first; Proverbs, written second; and then Ecclesiastes, most likely written at a time his kingdom was crumbling around him due to the idol worship he had allowed in the land. 

The title means “one who addresses an assembly.” The word he uses for God is Elohim, which – more than other words he could have used- focused his audience on God as a Creator, and us as the created. Solomon is apparently wanting to address a wider audience than just the Jewish people.

He is addressing a universal human condition.  What is the point of life?  How do I find meaning and purpose and hope in the midst of a world that can be very confusing?

Marshes and Marshwiggles

     At some point in my life, I lost my imagination. 

     I don't mean misplaced it temporarily, like I do my cell phone at least once a month. I lost the ability I had as a child to see the wonder and creativity with which God infuses even the most ordinary things in the world.  There have been times in the last year or two where this lost friend briefly sparked, drawing near with its light and warmth, only to grow dim yet again as the business of life dampened its glow.

      A recent hike through a swampy woods on a blustery, 50 degree day in Northern Michigan rekindled that spark.

    I'll be honest - this was not where I intended to be. My plan for the day involved an NBA game and a nice cup of Cherry Chocolate coffee while vegging on my sofa, but here I was on a trail hemmed in by barely budding trees and surrounded by lots of wintery grays and browns. I don't mind wearing clothes with those lovely earth tones, but if I had to be hiking, I expected more from Spring.

     The dullness and potential serenity of this woodsy jaunt could not restrain my 6-year-old caffeine-in-a-bundle, Vincent; his equally frenetic friend Marilee, who was at times literally a blur; and my 12-year-old son Braden, who gamely tried to keep up with the other two.  Vincent took the lead (as he reminded us again and again - "Stop! Wait! I'm the leader!").  Makeshift wooden gun in hand, he fearlessly led us through a gray/brown maze of lingering winter bursting with wolves, superheroes, villains, and invisible zombie giants, as Marilee screamed at...something, I'm not sure what.  Bugs, maybe.

    I must have absorbed some of their energy, because I soon realized this ordinary woods offered a smorgasbord of very cool things. Uprooted trees might not actually be zombie forts, but they were pretty awesome in their own right.  So as the kids screamed and wildly shot giants with their stick guns, I fired up the camera app on my first generation Droid phone and started to see the mystery and wonder of the woods.

     I kept halting their breakneck progress to take pictures; I couldn't help it. Hints of beauty poked through everywhere. Cold, clear streams trickled over smoothed pebbles and under fallen birch branches. Yellow marsh lilies pushed their way through the dead reeds of the slowly warming swamp, pressing against an aging wooden boardwalk.  Almost without my noticing, the child in me reignited a spark of creative life, seeing a late Spring work its miracle where before I had only seen winter's lingering weariness and decay.