Ecclesiastes 2:24-25

Ecclesiastes 2:24-25 24 A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, 25 for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?

This is one of the passages in Ecclesiastes that is quoted by a lot of different biblical figures, including Jesus. Everyone who quotes it has a dislike of the statement. The Teacher in Ecclesiastes is the only one who offers an alternative. Enjoy life! This is a message not expressed enough in the church or by well meaning Christians. The facts are we don’t know anything about what happens when a person dies. We have faith that there is a bodily resurrection and that we spend eternity in Christ’s presence. That being said we need a healthy dose of what the Teacher has to say. Eat and drink, enjoy life because in the end this maybe all we have. The Teacher sees this as a gift of God, when you realize that you need to actually enjoy life, I would add while holding on to your other faith elements. The end of verse twenty four and verse twenty five lend themselves to the idea that not everyone gets this. In fact the Teacher is claiming that this is a gift by God. I’ve heard people understand this as predestination, so that would again mean there is no point to this activity. I don’t think that is what the Teacher is expressing here. The fact of the matter is the people who figure out how to hold onto their beliefs and enjoy life come from all areas of life, rich, poor, wise or fool. Being one or the other doesn’t guarantee that you will ever figure this out or actually put it into practice. We need to remember that God has given us this life, and while we may not understand why things happen or why the evil succeed and the good are oppressed. Sometimes we need to remember that we need to take a step back and remember this life. Eat, drink, and enjoy.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I love this line too. It is repeated in Eccl. 3 after the famous "To everythnig there is a season..." bit. I regularly read those two together. Also, the enjoyment is "satisfaction" in work...i.e. do something you love and do well at it. Might change our economic outlook if we employed this as a standard of a good productive society.
4:32 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ortega: "Man Has No Nature"

"Man has to be himself in spite of unfavorable circumstances; that means he has to make his own existence at every single moment. He is given the abstract possiblity of existing, but not the reality." Today unfortunatly I got very little opportunity to read but when I did I was able to read and excerpt from Ortega (of course dealing with existentialism). Ortega has a very nice writing style that is very understandable but also thought provoking. This quote I have above is the first two sentences of the selection. What struck me about these sentences is the reality of it. Man is the one that chooses his reality. That is he chooses who or what he is to be. Man is under the influence of countless things in his life, religion, politics, friends, and family, not to mention history in general but it is his/her choices that influences his/her reality. I am not saying that man creates his /her reality apart or separate from physical scientific reality. What I am saying is th
Read more

Theology vs. Scripture

I've been doing some thinking. I've been apart of and have been watching the discussion taking place on Locust and Honey on the General conference. I did post some statements but recently a relatively short discussion on homosexuality has surfaced. Now this is a hot button issue for pretty much everyone but there were a few issues I had with the various points that were given, as well as some thoughts on what is happening in the church right now around this issue. First off, I was struck by the insistence that the church needs to be open and affirming. I am not making any claims on whether this is right or wrong but the church has never in its history been an "open and affirming" organization. This is just a statement of fact, and I find it quite interesting that most people claim that the Methodist church needs to be open and affirming when I believe that John Wesley would not have been. Lest we forget John was known for kicking people out of his societies if
Read more

Stewardship Prayer

Scripture: 1 Kings 19:1-13 Central Verse: “…but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.” 1 Kings 19:14b-13 Central Truth: This is the second lesson in our stewardship series and it focuses on Prayer. This may seem like an odd verse to focus on prayer within our membership vows but we must take the time to begin to understand in the most basic elements what prayer is. Prayer is communication with God. With communication there are two important attributes to the conversation. The first is listening and the second is speaking. Most people would put speaking as the primary for conversation but it is just the opposite which is listening. When we speak about prayer in its most basic components we are talking about conversation. Most of the time it feels like we do all the talking. We fill up the silence of our lives with it. This relegates the ro
Read more