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5th February 2024
WednesdayReflection
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'Thomas Schreiner'
'Professor,
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary'
Ecclesiastes 12:13-142
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Stop and Enjoy the Ordinary
It's Friday evening.
God has carried us through another week of work, and we are greeted with a new weekend.
For many of us these next two days are free from work duties.
It's an opportunity for rest and leisure, and for taking time to think about our lives in the sovereign God's story.
And thankfully we are not left to our own speculation.
God wrote a book, and within that book is another book, the book of Ecclesiastes.
Ecclesiastes is realistic.
It teaches us that life under the sun is often empty, futile, and absurd, and yet it does not run us into the rocks of despair either.
The conclusion of the book functions as the lens, the perspective, by which the whole of the book should be read.
After all this, there is only one thing to say:
Have reverence for God, and obey his commands, because this is all that we were created for. God is going to judge everything we do, whether good or bad, even things done in secret.
Ecclesiastes 12:13-14
When we understand that this world isn't paradise on earth, we are reminded that nothing is more important than a right relationship with God.
Ecclesiastes reminds us of our limitations and finiteness.
We read in Ecclesiastes 3:11, God "has made everything beautiful in its time."
Life is a blend of beauty and mystery.
We see the beauty of life in the waves of the ocean crashing ashore, in the rain cascading down in a thunderstorm, and in seeing shafts of the sun streaming through the trees while hiking in woods.
We see the beauty of the created world, but at the same time we yearn for eternity.
We long for something that transcends time.
We sense there is something more than just this life.
I was looking at an intensely purple iris this year and thought how indescribably beautiful it was.
I longed for the beauty in the flower to be in me.
We realize that such beauty is found only in God himself, in Jesus Christ.
He is beautiful, and he offers us beauty in the living water of union with him, which quenches the thirst in our souls (John 4:14).
Notice also that though God has put a desire for eternity and a desire for beauty in our hearts, our lives contain many mysteries we cannot understand.
We can sense beauty in the world God has made; we cannot master our lives.
We often cannot trace the fabric of God's work.
Life doesn't always make sense to us.
And we can't make what is crooked straight.
Life is full of many puzzles and mysteries and sufferings which we can't solve.
Ecclesiastes teaches us that life on earth is full of suffering and tragedy.
And yet at the same time we are called upon to enjoy everyday life.
The call to enjoy life is a persistent theme in the book (Ecclesiastes)
We find these words in chapter 3,
"I perceived that there is nothing better for [human beings] than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live;
also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil - this is God's gift to man"
Ecclesiastes 3:12-13.
We are not being told here to eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.
Instead, we are being told how to live our lives during this present evil age.
God gives us time to enjoy the fruit of our toil, whether we are a salaried labourer in the workforce or a busy mum at home with the kids all week.
Whatever our station in life, there is joy God intends for us to experience from our toil.
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This is an edited version.
The full article and Bible references are avaiable on request
Thomas Schreiner
is James Buchanan Harrison Professor of New Testament Interpretation and Professor of Biblical Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
where he also serves as Associate Dean of the School of Theology.
He is the author or editor of several books and commentaries.
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