This Sunday, I had to skip church due to sickness, so I did not get to preach the New Years sermon that I had prepared from Ecclesiastes 9. Here is an excerpt from it, where the author begins to point us toward some pursuits that will lead us to God’s ends:
pursue JOY | [7] Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do.
The first tool that the author gives us is joy, and with it a freedom from guilt. Christians are known for being a bit uptight when it comes to living life. Spending countless hours deliberating over whether or not it is okay to do this or that…to the extent that it becomes hard to enjoy anything. The author says: eat your gluten-filled bread with joy and drink your wine with a merry heart. Basically, God has given this world as an expression of His goodness. If we are going to reveal God’s goodness and connect it to this world, we better have an understanding of what this looks like in our own lives. We need to learn to enjoy God through His creation. Ask yourself: where do I find God’s goodness in His creation?
pursue HOLINESS | [8] Let your garments be always white. Let not oil be lacking on your head.
My dad wrote a little book filled with stories of my grandfather and I remember reading those, getting to know my grandpa through my dad’s memories. One of the stories ended with my grandpa saying: don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty as long as you are able to clean them off when you are done. Meaning, work hard, get in the trenches, but don’t compromise your morals. Don’t be afraid to walk beside messy people, but don’t forget that you are called with a purpose. The call to reach the world does not supersede the call to sanctification and holiness. As Christians our desire to love people to Christ must be done in conjunction with our process of being made more like Christ. Ask yourself: am I leading myself into temptation (even as I pray against it)?
pursue PURPOSE | [9] Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun.
There is a beauty to monotony. Adults have a hard time with this, we get used to good things and they lose their sense of wonder. GK Chesterton addressees this in his book Orthodoxy:
[Children] always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that he has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
The author’s call to ‘enjoy life with your wife’ is a perfect example of this. When you are dating, no one has to tell you to find joy in the object of your affection. As days turn into weeks, into months, into years, the monotony of life catches up and that easy joy is no longer easy. We all feel it.
Hollywood toys with these emotions. One of the most common modern plotlines is the story of how some guy or girl got out from underneath the boring life they were stuck in; they found a new life that allowed them to be their truest selves. Over and over again we get the encouragement to pursue this freedom – this liberation of our individual self. The problem is, what happens when that next life doesn’t satisfy, or the one after that?
Movies always end with: they all lived happily ever after, but life isn’t that simple. As an example, there was a film that came out about 10 years ago that was this story: leave monotonous life to search the world for fulfillment, and in this story it is found in a foriegn place with a foreign man. This movie was based on a memoir. In real life, the author has moved on from the man in the movie, who was everything she was looking for, to pursue a relationship with her best friend. Since then she has had a few other relationships, but is currently single again and searching, not only for a partner, but also for meaning.
I am not trying to pick on this woman, as a matter of fact, I feel bad for her; but her book was on the NYT bestseller list for 187 weeks and sold 13 million copies, so I know this about a lot more than her. She is selling an idea, a concept of how to find a meaningful life, and it is all a lie. It does damage because rather than teaching people how to live with the reality of monotony, it tells them that they can have a life without it. Avoiding monotony just turns into a constant process of starting over; hoping that the next thing will provide a meaning that previous things have not. She even described this meaningless cycle in an article she wrote about her process of trying to find the perfect love:
I might indeed win the man eventually. But over time (and it wouldn’t take long), his unquenchable infatuation for me would fade, as his attention returned to everyday matters. This always left me feeling abandoned and invisible; love that could be quenched was not nearly enough love for me.
Whenever monotony starts to set in – the encouragement that we are often getting from culture (and friends) is: move on to something that seems more fulfilling (you deserve more). The author of Ecclesiastes encourages us the other way: fight for joy in the monotony. It is a fight. It is easier to just keep chasing the wind (a favorite phrase from Ecclesisates). Chasing the wind gets you nothing. Instead, the promise here is that there is a depth of meaning that comes from learning to honor the monotony of life. There is a joy of learning to love one person and doing what is necessary to care for them.
The question is: how do we find this? The secret to finding joy in the toil of this vain life is to see how it fits into God’s larger purpose. We don’t have to create the meaning and fulfillment from ourselves; we are given value and purpose. The work of the Christian in this life is to embrace the ‘portion in life’ that we have recieved.
As this relates to my wife, I recognize that she is not just someone I picked out, she was given to me by God. Not for me to find my happiness in at all times, but to sacrificially love. I can reject the modern storyline that says: if you aren’t happy, do something else, because I know that my life has much greater purpose than happiness. While I may not always feel joy in this life at which I toil under the sun, I don’t follow my heart, I follow my Savior. I trust that in the long term, He is building something that is much greater than what I create or find on my own. Ask yourself: do I trust that following God’s way through the monotony will lead to good?
pursue MOTIVATION | [10] Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.
The last tool the author leaves us with is attached to motivation. He presents us with a bit of a quandary. He continues to point to the fact that our work is meaningless and that we will never achieve the value we all desire to find in our work, yet he tells us to work hard and to do good work. What’s the deal?
Once again he is giving us an idea of what we have to offer to the world. We may not be the most talented people in the world, nor are we necessarily people who are going to come up with the ideas that make people’s lives better. We may not have jobs that are seen as vitally important and we may not be even the hardest workers in the crew. What we do have is a reason to work. Our motivation to get out of bed in the morning goes beyond making money or achieving success. We have a God who has given us life and has called us to work toward His glory. Ask yourself: is God’s glory the motivation for my actions?
If we follow these four pursuits: JOY, HOLINESS, PURPOSE, and MOTIVATION, we will also find God’s ends. Too often we want to know the end so that we can organize the means to get there. What the author of Ecclesiastes wants us to see is that the practice of simple faithfulness over time allows us to experience the work of God in our lives. A good life is measured at the end, not in the midst of it. Let’s live for the promised fulfillment that God is leading us toward.