Differing Perspectives, Differing Seasons...Differing Well?

Differing Perspectives

One of the Bible’s wisdom literature books, Ecclesiastes, is often attributed by scholars as being the work of King Solomon – arguably the wisest man to ever live (that’s how Scripture portrays him). It is not a universally held view that he is the author. Solomon is not named in the book as author; rather, the author is referred to as “The Preacher” or “The Wise One”. For many readers, it sits at odds with how they understand the rest of Scripture to be written.

The Preacher says “all is vanity” 38 times in this book – futility, pointlessness, frustrating circumstances, unsatisfying endeavours all part of the case for this overarching message. Jesus himself would have been very familiar with this book; having been taught it as He grew up around the temple, sitting in the classes of the rabbis of the day. 

Ecclesiastes reveals the necessity of fearing God in a fallen and frequently confusing and frustrating world. What spoils life, according to The Preacher, is the attempt to get more out of life – work, pleasure, money, food, and knowledge – more than life itself can provide. This kind of pursuit is not fulfilling and leads to weariness, hence the repeated exclamation “all is vanity.” 

No matter how wise or rich or successful one may be, one cannot find meaning in life apart from God. In Ecclesiastes, the fact that “all is vanity” is a message driving us all to fear God, whose work endures forever. The Preacher asserts that significance comes from taking pleasure in God and His gifts and being content with what life has to offer and what God gives, rather than relentlessly seeking more.

Ecclesiastes is consistent with the rest of Scripture in its explanation that true wisdom is to fear God even when we cannot see all that God is doing. This particular book’s truth is partly caught up in the writer’s brutal honesty of the struggle they are going through dealing with the lack of solution to the meaninglessness they are struggling with.  

We live on the other side of Christ’s time on earth, and we know – as a product of our own faith journeys – that Christ rescues us from the vanity of the world by subjecting himself to this same vanity, suffering the full consequences on our behalf, so we might be released from these consequences.

Differing Seasons

In the middle of Ecclesiastes is a passage that many of us know, and which sits as a part explanation of the writer’s struggle with “all is vanity”. The first eleven verses of chapter 3 are as follows:

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot,

a time to kill and a time to heal,

a time to tear down and a time to build,

a time to weep and a time to laugh,

a time to mourn and a time to dance,

a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, 

a time to search and a time to give up,

a time to keep and a time to throw away,

a time to tear and a time to mend,

a time to be silent and a time to speak,

a time to love and a time to hate,

a time for war and a time for peace.

What do workers gain from their toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

This passage, in its entirety, seeks to represent the sum of human activity. The Preacher concludes that God is in control of each moment of our existence in this world; He has a proper time and a good purpose for every experience. Ecclesiastes describes the meaninglessness of living without God. 

In this passage, we see a reflection on all the experiences that form part of God’s creation, one He originally called “good.” But despite this original goodness, humanity fell into sin and all creation was subjected to the curse of God. This brought into the world meaninglessness, vanity, violence, and frustration. 

Graciously, God did not leave his creation to an endless round of meaninglessness. God’s response to sin is to redeem, renew, restore, and recreate. Whilst the whole of Scripture traces the full story of God’s full plan for and involvement in our salvation, this part of chapter 3 reminds us of God’s presence in all the seasons and dichotomies we face as His followers.

Differing Well?

Rather than deal with these two-fold differences described here in detail (some of these may be for another day), I am choosing to rest in the knowledge that God, as our maker and sustainer, is part of each of the “split forks” described above. I imagine myself asking “is this a time for … (one thing)” or “is it a time for … (the opposite)” and am encouraged and peaceful that God is amidst whichever direction I feel drawn by His Spirit towards.

Our circumstances will be different, each of ours compared to the another’s. Our personal walk with the Lord may inform us clearly of a direction to take that is not how others would see it, or choose to go. As brothers and sisters together, the call God makes on us is not to see it as a binary situation, but to rest in His deeply intimate, all-knowing, all-caring and all-powerful presence in those situations as we navigate what is in front of us, sometimes making different choices and having different understandings and/or perspectives.

That is the beauty of the tapestry that God is weaving in the world that surrounds us. I trust you are able to see it take shape and form, as The Preacher describes it, because “He (God) has also set eternity in the (your) human heart.”

Shalom.