I break a 5 month sabbatical…I just couldn’t stay away. But a lot has happened in those intervening months. We have had to move yet again and the more you do it the harder it gets…or maybe that’s because I am getting older, but that is another story. Vanity, vanity…all is vanity.
Lest any one think otherwise, let me set the record straight–the Lord has a sense of humor and sometimes it is naughty. Well, not naughty as in sinful because that is not in His nature. But sometimes he drags us through things we would prefer not to be drug through so that coming out the other side we are more reliant upon Him than when we first started. During this most recent move from one rental house to another (yes, you can see the writing on the wall in that there is yet another move on our horizon when we will finally be able to purchase an abode of our very own), our church launched a sermon series on the book of Ecclesiastes. This is a relatively small book that often gets over looked for the likes of Genesis, Isaiah, or Psalms. Traditionally thought to be written by King Solomon, and I have no reason to challenge this belief, it is a book not for the faint of heart.
In a lovely fictional book filled with wonderful quips, Barbara Kingsolver’s Pigs in Heaven, she bandies about phrases like:
“She has chosen Barbie as her lord and savior” to describe the shallow allegiance of a young woman to her make-up and appearance.
Or,
“You look like you have been drug through a knot hole” to describe the look of someone just this side of being hit by a Mack truck. A fairly well known description, but one I had not heard of before reading Pigs in Heaven.
Anyway, it is this last phrase that speaks to the feeling of reading Ecclesiastes. To make that knot hole even smaller, is to read (or listen in my case) while setting up house after yet another move. Picking up a treasure that has managed to make the journey from the US to Italy to Australia, to the US, to Germany, to the US, and now back to Australia, is a testament to either the talent of the various packers involved in each move or to the resilience of the item itself. Gently placing said item on the shelf only to hear in the background (I was listening the Max McLean read Ecclesiastes while unpacking) “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.” Or “What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?” Or “Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.” Well, I tell you, with passages like these its a wonder I didn’t pack it in (pun intended). With my treasured item gently placed on the shelf, the sobering reality of our temporary existence struck home. So then, if what we acquire to provide creature comforts is all “vanity”, what then truly matters? Don’t try to find the answer in Ecclesiastes because Solomon is a cheeky chap–he never really answers that question forthrightly…until the end. For 12 chapters, he drives home the relentlessness and pointlessness of living in a fallen world. He is annoyingly obtuse in pushing us toward the stark realities that define our world.
To make matters worse, as if after reading the above it could get any worse but oh it does…Solomon goes on to suggest that even trying to understand the futility is fraught with sadness! “For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.” Are you depressed yet? Let it all sink in and it will come.
The bottom line is that this world is sad, hard, evil, miserable, mean, and full of suffering–no denying that. The wisdom is in the knowing and realizing that we were meant for something glorious, beautiful, and fulfilling. “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:4) We live, however, in that time of “former things” and they are just not passing away…not as quickly as most of us would like. Thankfully, the Preacher, in the very last two verses, lays out for us with a sense of ease and peace, that indeed all is not vanity. In fact, all is quite simple and plain.
“The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.” (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14
Fearing God and keeping his commandments is not vanity, nor is it striving after the wind. It is secure, true, and reliable. Our lives, rooted anywhere else other than this clear command, is most certainly vanity and a striving after the wind.
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