Somewhat of a confusing passage for me today. Ecclesiastes 2:12-14 says, “Then I turned myself to consider wisdom and madness and folly…Then I saw that wisdom excels folly…The wise man’s eyes are in his head, but the fool walks in darkness.”
That all sounds good and normal (biblically-speaking), but the end of verse fourteen ushers in a change of thought: “Yet I myself perceived that the same event happens to them all.”
For today I thought it would be appropriate to just receive a reminder of Biblical love- God’s love. Immediately I went to 1 John 4. I love this chapter and reading, studying, and meditating on it never grows old.
To keep from writing out a sermon, I’m going to focus on verses 7-11 even though I read the whole chapter:
Wow…I can really identify with a couple things in today’s passage. Verses 1-2 say, “I said in my heart, ‘Come now, I will test you with mirth; therefore enjoy pleasure’; but surely, this also was vanity. I said of laughter
So Solomon “set [his] heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all that is done under heaven” (1:13). Remember that Solomon was the wisest mortal to walk the earth.
II Chronicles 1 tells the story of how God gave Solomon all his wisdom: “And Solomon went up there to the bronze altar before the LORD, which was at the tabernacle of meeting, and offered a thousand burnt offerings on it. On that night God appeared to Solomon, and said to him, ‘Ask! What shall I give you?'”
As I read through this passage, a few things stuck out to me:
v.5- “The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it arose.” It’s so true that the sun almost seems to move from one side of the sky as quickly as it possibly can. We wake up and not much longer, we’re back in bed. We wake up again, and not long after we find ourselves asleep again. The days go by so fast that we don’t have time to stop and watch them pass. We must actively make the most we can of the little time we have for God’s glory.
What should I write about next? Are there issues that you are facing or that the church is facing today that need to be addressed? Take 15 seconds to let me know!
