Abigail Denton

Chapter One

If you’re following along, we’re in week two of a study through the book of Ecclesiastes. Reading and researching through this first chapter was much applicable than I had thought it was going to be.

Chapter one opens the book with the author describing himself to the audience. He doesn’t specifically come out and say his name is Solomon, but based on history and Christian and Jewish tradition and lack of evidence otherwise, its safe to attribute the book to Solomon. You can read more about it here, the first article in our study. The second verse is commonly known as his thesis statement. Solomon sums up what he’s going to talk about in the entire book in this one verse.

“Meaningless! Meaningless!”
    says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
    Everything is meaningless.”

The word meaningless (NIV) is the Hebrew word hebel. Theologians have defined this word as smoke, vapor, ephemeral. It has the idea of seeming solid, but in reality it’s not. The idea that you can’t grab ahold of it, you can’t keep it contained. In my own life, as I think about caring for my house, it’s like laundry or weeding a garden. You are never at the bottom of the chore. You never finish and complete the task, never needing done again. It’s a cycle of doing the same thing over and over and never making any progress or getting to the end.

Verse three introduced a phrase that is repeated over and over throughout the book. I want to pause and point it out. The phrase is “under the sun” and this phrase is meant to define what Solomon is talking about. He’s talking about literal things on earth, things we can see and touch. He’s talking about nature and human activity. In contrast, he’s not talking about God and spiritual things. The book of Ecclesiastes is looking at the big questions of life through the lens or perceptive of things “under the sun.” The perspective takes God out of the equation. It tries to explain big theological questions that humans have been asking for all of human history without putting God at the center, or even in, at all. It’s important to remember when we read through this book, that we keep this in mind. We need to remind ourselves that Solomon was looking to define purpose in life without God.

He tries to use history to find purpose. Verse four reveals that history has continued to march forward. Generations have come and gone, society keeps moving forward. When you stop to think back over the course of known human history there is so much we don’t know. There are records and people’s lives that are gone forever, lost to time. Civilizations that existed thousands of years ago and we know hardly anything at all about them. A few years back I was able to travel to Israel with Isaac. It was eye-opening to see such an old country, full of so much history. Being raised in the United States, I didn’t realize how young our country is. At one point in the trip, we went down underground in the city of Jerusalem and were able to see pieces of past societies. They existed and were built up, then they were conquered and destroyed, then the next society built over top of the previous one. This cycle continued over and over for generations. Solomon looks at this cycle from his perspective and finds it lacking. He finds it pointless and “meaningless.” He does not find purpose in the cycle, which is what he’s looking for.

Next, he tries to use science and nature. He observes the cycles in nature and how never-ending they are. The sun rises and it sets. The wind comes and goes. Streams and rivers flow into the sea, never filling it up. It’s a really interesting concept to think about creation without a creator. The seasons change, and the world spins, every day the same. If you take God out of the picture, creation speaks differently. The Bible speaks of creation pointing us to God. We see God’s beauty, creativity, and order in creation. We are reminded that God keeps his promises when a rainbow comes out. As a christian, leaves changing colors and snowflakes speak to me of God’s character and love. If you take all of that and view it through the perspective of “under the sun” creation speaks of random, fleeting, chaotic change without purpose. Creation would speak not of love and beauty, but of vanity and lacking of meaning. Verse eight speaks to this as “all things are wearisome.”

The end of verse eight caught my eye. “The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.” It pricked my heart to think of all the things that I fill my day with to satisfy a never-ending desire for seeing and hearing more. The opposite of this would be contentment. How much of my day is filled with wanting more, more things to keep me busy or more free time. More friends and plans and more time at home. More hobbies and resources to give to them. Always wanting more because I’ve taken God out of the center of my life.

The second half of chapter one is devoted to exploring the idea of finding purpose in wisdom or philosophy. In verse thirteen he uses two words to describe this. He uses a word (NIV translates to study) that means digging deep into something right in front of me. It’s the idea of paying careful and close attention to something close to me. He also uses a word (NIV translates to explore) that means to take a sweeping survey of a large group of things, farther away from me. The use of these two words means that Solomon was looking at things right in front of him like his personal daily life and his physical surrounds, but he was also looking out into the earth at other countries and past history. He blames God for giving humans such a burden and if looked at the correct way, it’s a very gracious burden to be given. It has been said that God put a God-shaped hole in all of us so that we would keep pursuing the key to fit that hole until we found God. He put a burden in our hearts, every human heart, to find the meaning of life because He knew we would never pursue God if He didn’t. If we didn’t have a gap in our souls that only God could fill we would fill that gap with everything and anything. The things found under the sun. Praise Jesus for that burden because without it, we would be aimlessly wandering through time and space, with no purpose and no goal of finding a purpose.

The last phrase of the chapter reminds me of the famous quote from Aristotle, “the more you know the more you realize you don’t know.” The more Solomon thought about and searched for purpose, the more he realized there wasn’t one. He was looking and looking for a purpose apart from God and came back to the same conclusion. History, science, nature, wisdom, and philosophy all spoke the same word: without God there is no meaning in any of those things.

To close I’d like to share my thoughts on all of this. I was reminded throughout my study that I try to find purpose in the tasks before me apart from God. I clean my house and work through homeschool activities trying to be fulfilled with the work itself. I’m painting in my kitchen and the task of creating a beautiful space is not fulfilling in itself, apart from God. There are so many cyclical and tedious tasks that I work on throughout my days and weeks and sometimes (often, if I’m honest) I find myself wanting more. I feel like my life is lacking purpose and meaning, and this study is reminding me that I feel that way not because of the tasks that I have on my plate right now. It’s because of my flawed perspective.

Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s hard work to do dishes several times a day, only to find more at the end of the day. We had three babies in three years, so we had two diapered babies for several years in a row. Changing diapers is not the most fun task I’ve ever had, even though I love my babies with everything in me. I’m not minimizing the tedious tasks before us and the challenge it is to find contentment and joy in those tasks. Simple is not the same as easy. This truth has been sinking into my heart these last few days as I process what I’m learning. I’m learning I have so far to go, so much sanctification work to do. By God’s grace we can move toward’s being more like Him because He gives us purpose in our lives. There is purpose in the cycles of house chores. There is purpose in serving at your church, even if you don’t really even like kids. There is purpose in educating yourself on social justice issues. There is purpose in getting together with a safe friend to chat through theology with an open mind. There is purpose in painting walls and decorating our spaces. God graciously allows us to find purpose through Him in all of the spaces we are each and every single day.

I pray the same thing for you as I’m praying for myself. That we can see God’s purpose in the tasks and spaces we face today. That God will remind us that we are fulfilled only when we keep our focus on Him. I close with First Corinthians 15:58. “Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” Let’s work hard at not letting our emotions and the difficulty of the task in front of us distract us. Plunge passionately into those tasks because we are working for the Lord, and our work is filled with purpose.