I know that John comes after Luke, but again God is leading me to another book in the bible. This is a short book and with vacation coming up I thought it might be a good one to do over the summer. Plus I felt maybe the Gospels should be spread out for some reason, what that reason is, I don't know. So here goes a look into Ecclesiastes.
When Solomon became king, he asked God for wisdom. Solomon writes of life's experiences and about the true meaning of life. This was towards the end of his life so he is showing us a reflective look that the things he tried in life were meaningless without God. This man was very powerful and had anything that a person could wish for and yet he thought it was futile. This book is to help spare us the bitterness of learning through our experiences that life is nothing without God. He studied, taught, judged and wrote this book; yet he did not heed his own advice. With humility and repentance at the end he wanted to warn others to not follow the same path that he went down. This book is full of practical and spiritual wisdom.
"Everything temporal must be seen in light of the eternal." NIV notes
v. 1-11 "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless. What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again. All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow."
Solomon starts off getting right to the point. He is saying nothing on earth is good without God in our lives. Throughout history there are constant circles of sameness. People come and go, the sun rises and sets and time goes marching on regardless of it's surroundings. The eyes and ears never get their fill, this is very apparent in our current time. Many people are never satisfied with what they have and are always wanting more and more. History repeats itself over and over, the events might be different, yet the undercurrent is the same old story.
The Jewish people passed down the history of their families and they respected their elders. Today seems to be very different. I remember a time when I went to visit my grandma in WV and she spent the entire day talking about stories and showing me pictures. That was a great day, it was snowing the entire day and we had no where to go. There are many that do not respect their elders, we should learn from them, they have valuable information that could help us in our lives and it is good to know where we come from.
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