Ecclesiastes // Chasing MeaningSample

The seasons of life are threaded together by high times and hard times. The great joys that come with relationships, weddings, and a baby’s entrance into the world are woven together with low times. Broken relationships lead to broken hearts. The death of dreams disappoints. Divorce ends a marriage. A grieving wife buries her husband. A husband holds his wife’s hand and sings as she slips into eternity. The heart seems to be made of elastic as it is stretched and pulled throughout the hills and valleys of life’s journey.

So, how do we respond?

Ecclesiastes 7:14

In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him.

Our response, Solomon reminds us, is to trust. God is the God of the high times and low times. He is there, rejoicing with us in the times of prosperity, the times when our hearts burst with thanksgiving. We trust him and say—God, you are good! And God is the God of the hard times. He is there through sobs of sorrow, the deep pain of grief, the tests and treatments, and the doctor’s bad news.

Some will try to tell us why the hard times come. Men and women will claim to know the ways of God, but they do not (Eccl. 8:17). Some things will happen in this life that we will never figure out. Job, a man who knew both blessing and tragedy, confessed that God “does great things and unsearchable, marvelous things…” (Job 5:9). Isaiah said that God’s “understanding is unsearchable” (Isa. 40:28). At the end of a chapter describing God’s sovereignty, Paul could only break out in praise for God’s unsearchable judgments and incomprehensible ways. Let’s use this doxology in Romans 11:33-36 as our ending prayer.

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” “Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.