“So I have reflected on all this and concluded that the righteous and the wise and what they do are in God’s hands, but no man knows whether love or hate awaits him.”
~ Ecclesiastes 9:1
Hi James and Ellen,
Do you find life to be meaningless? What do you think that a guy, gal or kid should do with his or her life? Your grandpaa is sure that you are enjoying life – that you are spending a lot of time doing fun things and playing a lot each day. Your grandpaa is also sure that you are enjoying learning new things and that you are eating food that you like to eat. Do you like to do chores? Even though chores sounds like a word that means that you are expected to do something that you may not like doing, doing chores can be fun to do. When a guy or gal gets as old as your grandpaa, the guy or gal may wonder if spending years going to schools to become educated and then spending years working to earn money was really worth it. What do you think – is going to a school or schools to learn new things and having a job or jobs to make money worth it when your life has little value on planet Earth? What do you think gives your lives value – especially since your lives have been polluted with a malignancy called sin? This is what the Ecclesiastes teacher – who may have been Solomon, was wrestling with when he wrote what he wrote in his missive. Whoever wrote the Ecclesiastes Book was a guy who was old. The Ecclesiastes teacher had experienced and had seen the real good and the real bad in life. The Ecclesiastes teacher had arrived at the conclusion that he should have lived his life fully relishing it as the grave – which is where he now realized where he was going to probably end up in real soon, would not allow him to plan, work, gain knowledge and use wisdom. By the time that the Ecclesiastes teacher wrote Ecclesiastes 9, the Ecclesiastes teacher sounds like he is feeling pretty bummed. The Ecclesiastes teacher starts out in verse 1 saying, “So I have reflected on all this and concluded that the righteous and the wise and what they do are in God’s hands, but no man knows whether love or hate awaits him.” The author of the Ecclesiastes Book had seen a wise guy win against an evil guy – only to see the wise guy forgotten by the guys and gals who he helped. The Ecclesiastes teacher had seen both good and bad guys prosper and not prosper, both good and bad guys who were wise and who had no wisdom and both good and bad guys who died untimely and who lived long lives. The Ecclesiastes teacher saw life as being filled with inequities. It just was not making any sense to the Ecclesiastes teacher how life for each guy, gal and kid unfolds – leading him to conclude that it just had to be God Who was the One Who had, Who was and Who would unfold the lives of every single guys, gals and kids.
As you grow up and become as old as your dad, you will see good and bad right next to each other. As you grow up and become as old as your dad, you will have made, are making and will make good and bad choices. When you become as old as your grandpaa, you will remember that you often came close to siding with the bad side. The good side for a guy, gal or kid begins when a decision of faith is made to believe in what Jesus Christ did on a cross to cancel out his or her sins and to assure him or her eternal life The bad side will go on forever for a guy, gal and kid who does not make a decision of faith – leaving the guy, gal and kid with a gnawing emptiness which will always be trying to tell the guy, gal or kid that he or she is missing something. When your grandmaa and grandpaa were living at the rural resident training center in Concepción, Ñuflo de Chávez in Bolivia, your grandpaa would each afternoon play volleyball or a type of soccer called fulbito with the rural resident training center students. In the house that was adjacent to the Centro de Capacitación – the rural resident training center, there were two young guys living with their grandparents. These two guys would sometimes play volleyball with the guys from the town who would show up in the afternoon at the rural resident training center compound that was in Concepción to play volleyball against the Centro de Capacitación students. Concepción was a stop in the road for guys illegally taking vehicles from Brazil into Bolivia. Right across the street from the gate that opened up into the rural resident training center compound was a mechanic who your grandpaa had sometimes work on the C-10 Chevrolet pickup that your grandmaa and grandpaa had for a time in Bolivia. Your grandpaa one day noticed that his mechanic friend was working on a contraband vehicle. The guy who was driving that contraband vehicle and the guys who were the drivers of two other contraband vehicles plus a couple of gals traveling with them were sitting on the grass right outside the rural resident training center compound gate. The two young guys who lived with their grandparents in the house next to the rural resident training center compound heard that the guys driving the contraband vehicles were also carrying ‘white gold’. Cocaine is called ‘White gold’. The two young guys told the guys who were taking the contraband vehicles into Bolivia that they would get them around a military stop – where the guys would have to pay a bribe to be able to keep on driving to Santa Cruz. The guys in the contraband vehicles decided to follow the two young guys. The two young guys led the guys who were driving the contraband vehicles down an old road to an old building where they got the guys and gals to go into the building. The two young guys shot the three guys who were driving the contraband vehicles and the two gals with them.
Living right next to where the Bible was being taught were two young guys who killed three guys and two gals for the drugs and money that these guys and gals purportedly had. The question that the Ecclesiastes teacher would ask is – why was it those two guys who did that awful thing and not me? The only answer is – God knows. Your lives are not meaningless to God. Your lives are precious to God. God is using lives like yours to reflect His glory.
Ecclesiastes 9 (198)