Life is a gift, yet it can only be
enjoyed when received as such from the hand of God.
After
systematically demonstrating that none of the good things in this life hold the
key to fulfillment, satisfaction, or living well when considered on their own
merits, Kohelet brings his listeners to the point where we are left asking, ‘If not wisdom, wealth, pleasure, or
prestige, what then? What is the key? In the face of quickly-approaching death,
what will yield a profit (yitron) of any true value?’ Kohelet then invites us
to see that life itself is a beautiful gift to be enjoyed; however the irony is
that not all people have been empowered to enjoy the gift of life. Kohelet
exposits:
Behold, what I have seen to be good and
fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one
toils under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him, for this
is his lot. Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and
power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil—this is
the gift of God (5:18-19).
DelHousaye
and Brewer put it this way: God “has given us all things to enjoy, but we
cannot enjoy them without Him!”[1]
(Eccl. 2:25; 1 Tim. 6:17). A worldview that eliminates anything beyond life
“under the sun” will tend to short-circuit our capacity to enjoy life because
God, who created the earth and eternally exists beyond it, is the one who
graciously gives to mankind both the blessings of this life and the ability to
find enjoyment (and more critically contentment)
in what he has given. God is the one with the plan, a plan grander and more
excellent than any that humankind can fathom or grasp (3:11) . . . “Mankind has
no higher good than to synchronize with God’s beneficent purposes for him.”[2]
This is why Kohelet advises, “In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the
day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other” (7:14).
God’s universal plans may be largely a mystery to human beings, but they are
good plans, and ones that remind us of our place in the universe – we are not
gods. When we try to act like gods, injustice is the result. Look at the evidence
all around us; no, try as we might, human beings do not make very good gods. There
is one God alone whose deeds are righteous and whose works endure forever
(3:14), only he “has made everything beautiful in its time” (3:11).
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