I [almost] always find reading Ecclesiastes hard work. This year I chose to use Eugene Peterson’s The Message paraphrase to bring fresh light. It worked, so much so that as I finished chapter twelve I was tempted to go back and start again.
In his closing comments on the book Peterson says this (he uses the Quester as his metaphor for the Teacher as seen in other versions),
“Some editions of the New Testament include the Psalms at the end. It’s a most appropriate conclusion. The Psalms integrate the experience of grace into our lives at every level of praise and petition, of faith and doubt.
In the same way that the Psalms are an appropriate conclusion to the New Testament, Ecclesiastes is an appropriate introduction. People bring so many mistaken expectations to the gospel, so much silly sentiment, and so many childish demands that they hardly hear its real message. The Quester got rid of all that. He threw out the accumulated religious junk and banished the fraud that had paraded as faith.
The Quester’s well-orchestrated admonitions about life without God being nothing but smoke form a fitting preface to the New Testament. Because these admonitions clear the religious smoke from the air, revealing not only the truth about us but the truth about God. And that prepares us to fear him, which in turn motivates us to obey him.”
I think he’s right!
C. S. Lewis said this about giving, “I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc., is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot because our charitable expenditures exclude them.” I am challenged.
I read the quote below here,
Stanford anthropology professor Tanya Luhrmann made this remarkable comment in When God Talks Back:
“What one might call an avalanche of medical data has demonstrated that, for reasons still poorly understood, those who attend church and believe in God are healthier and happier and live longer than those who do not.”
I agree. I expect that the fruit of living a God-centred life will very often be seen in physical reality.
However, I would not say it is a law— I am not a proponent of the “prosperity gospel”. My Bible declares that following King Jesus is far more nuanced than that.
I stand with Job whose wisdom has stood for millennia and seems good for a few centuries more,
Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will leave this life., The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.