Who Invited Sarah?

Episode 3: Ecclesiastes pt. 1

Okay I decided to take a break last week because I was feeling overwhelmed and always want to give my all when I am listening to these episodes, but we are back. This is the first episode in this series on Ecclesiastes. I had to many thoughts about it so I only did one. Hopefully my existential thoughts make sense!

This book has a very different perspective than Proverbs. Proverbs essentially teaches that if you do the right thing then you will be “rewarded” and focuses on that fact that there are right and wrong ways to live. Ecclesiastes bases its conclusions on experimentation.

Proverbs is ancient and old, so it can be trusted, but Ecclesiastes innovates, you know its true because it has been tested and examined in the present.

I feel challenged by this because I struggle to make decisions. In my mind some decisions are black and white. Like should I help this person carry in their groceries or hold the door open. Really any decision that is for someone else is much easier for me to make in comparison to all the decisions I come across for me in my own life. What do I make of a situation when there is not morally or inherently a correct or incorrect choice? This question gives me anxiety, because as a Christian I know that the answer is “I don’t know” in this scenario and I should put my faith and trust in God and he will use all things for His glory and good. But, my fear is what if, by choosing one thing or the other, I just made God’s job “harder”. Now, in saying that, I am fully aware that this is me projecting that I feel like a burden for God sometimes and I feel the need to “perform” for Him. Its just a complicated thought process for me, because I understand that God loves me and I do not need to perform. But getting my mind to believe that is a totally different story. Correctly this false narrative I have relies on me setting aside time to sit with God and allow him to know my feelings good or bad and not always ask him questions.

The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem: “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.”

Ecclesiastes 1:1-2

Tim and Jon discussed how this book is organized differently along with its different voice compared to the other books. The Teacher’s voice makes up a lot of Ecclesiastes, but The Teacher is not the author. The author introduces us to the teacher and then allows him to take over until the very end of the chapter. The author then puts what we just heard from the Teacher into perspective with more broad biblical theology.

To better understand what is being said in the above verse we can look at the Hebrew words that are used. Essentially the Teacher is saying “Hevel, hevel, everything is hevel.”

Hevel (הֶבֶל): [heh’-bel] Smoke, vapor
Translates to “vanity”.

The most basic meaning of hevel can be looked at in Psalm 144. Human beings are here today and gone tomorrow, like a wisp of smoke. Fleeting or temporary.

Lord, what are human beings that you care for them, mere mortals that you think of them? They are like a hevel;
their days are like a fleeting shadow.

Psalm 144:3-4

It is also used in Job to describe his days.

I despise my life; I would not live forever. Let me alone; for my days are like hevel.

Job 7:16

In chapter 11 of Ecclesiastes, there is a poem about death. It discusses trying to enjoy life no matter how many years you have left because everything to come is here today and gone tomorrow. Fleeting. You can see how this is not necessarily meaningless, but it will not be around forever.

However many years anyone may live, let them enjoy them all. But let them remember the days of darkness, for there will be many. Everything to come is meaningless(hevel).

Ecclesiastes 11:8

In regards to Isaiah 57, where hevel is used to describe idols, it can be interpreted as “without meaning”, “absurd”, or “paradox”. Hevel has many different nuanced meanings. This is interesting because within Ecclesiastes the Teacher uses hevel 38 times and a majority of the time he uses it in a similar way to Isaiah instead of in a way that describes something that is fleeting.

There is something else meaningless (hevel) that occurs on earth: the righteous who get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked who get what the righteous deserve. This too, I say, is meaningless(hevel). 

Ecclesiastes 8:14

In Ecclesiastes 8:14, he is basically saying that these things happen all the time and it is “absurd”. We all know what smoke looks like, but when we reach out to touch it, it is “not there.” Comparing this to a real-life scenario, we can say: I tried to do the right thing, but when I did the right thing, I was punished for it.

The Teacher is saying that he has discovered there is a glitch in the system and things that I thought were true are not always true. I think this is a very different thing to grasp as Christians. Maybe more so as a child, but I do think throughout life. It makes me think of when good, wonderful people get sick. They could have done so much good in their life but it feels like thy are being punished with suffering. I believe we are allowed to wrestle with this tension between God promising us things as well as the knowledge that things do not always go the way he promised.

It is so interesting that this is the perspective in comparison to Proverbs and looking ahead there is another perspective within Job. It is almost like the wisdom literature is teaching us to take all these books that complement each other in tension and reckon with all three of them at once. There is no way we can figure any of this out on our own, which is terrifying, but also very cool. It puts an emphasis on relying on and trusting God in my eyes.

God gives some people wealth, possessions and honor, so that they lack nothing their hearts desire, but God does not grant them the ability to enjoy them, and strangers enjoy them instead. This is meaningless(hevel), a grievous evil.

Ecclesiastes 6:1-2

Even people who get everything they want, are not able to enjoy it. The whole point of Ecclesiastes is this conclusion: Fear God, keep his commandments, but do not expect that everything is going to work out. That does not mean that God is not good. Especially in this day and age this is so important to remember. We are able to see everything that we are “missing out on”. I constantly have to remind myself of this. I was talking to my mom recently about the things that I desire that are not happening in my life, but it’s hard to not focus on those things because they are everywhere. My goal lately has been to focus on the things that bring me joy and lean into those things and in a way let go of the things I am ” lacking” because I may not be “lacking” them in God’s eyes. Maybe instead other things, I haven’t even thought of will happen or maybe not. Maybe I will struggle with these things forever. But it has been so helpful to realize that it is not up to me, it is up to God.

Last week at house church (it’s like small group bible study) I was emotional and to be honest I have been for the past couple weeks but I have been hiding it because it didn’t feel like something I could bring to God. I feel guilty for feeling the things I am and for expressing them to God or my friends completely. So, when I shared in a small group of women towards the end of HC, I began to cry. Normally, when we break off we share and someone prays for you after. Well, this time Jess, knowing that I struggle to talk to God personally, asked me to pray first, basically just tell god how I was feeling. This made me very uncomfortable, but I knew what she was suggesting would help. So I sat there and cried and told God how I felt angry and sad and insecure, and stuck and how I knew that wasn’t his voice but I felt like I couldn’t stop. Writing this afterwards, I feel so much better. In the days since then I have been talking to God more and honestly just telling him that I trust him and even though I struggle with not knowing or being in control, I am really trying.

Also this is a short thought, but it made me think a lot when Tim and Jon said it. Just because you can’t see meaning in things in your life, doesn’t mean there isn’t meaning in them. I feel like I am on this retrospective gratitude pendulum. Swinging back and forth between oh that was terrible in the moment but lead me to this wonderful thing or that was awful and I see no purpose and I am mad at God for putting me through that for no reason. It is so important to remember that I do not see the whole picture ever. God does. which reminded my marvel loving brain of a quote from daredevil where Matt Murdock says this:

God’s plan is like a beautiful tapestry and the tragedy of being human is that we only get to see it from the back-ragged threads and muddy colors-we only get a hint of the beauty that would be revealed if we could see the whole pattern on the other side.

Matt Murdock

This is so true. However, as the tapestry grows, we might just get the chance to see how some of the strings connect in the back, relating things we had never imagined.

Loved this episode! See you next week for episode 4!