Wanderlust of the Soul - Ecclesiastes 6-7
Read: Ecclesiastes 6-7
Listen: A Song - “Vapor” by The Liturgists
Listen: A Meditation – “Vapor Meditation” by The Liturgists
Chapters 6-7 have been driving me batty. I have struggled while reading the chapters, let alone trying to study them and comprehend them at a deeper level. For one, they are discouraging; for another, they are written in different styles and address multiple topics within 41 verses. I can see why scholars and researchers despair of making coherent outlines for this book.
Now, if it seems like these chapters were ones I have already mentioned, don’t worry – they are. I couldn’t leave them at one post (even if I wanted to be done with them). I was frustrated that I couldn’t seem to get more from these chapters, so I kept digging.
In the last post, I wrote that the futility of life is what drives us forward toward Christ. In his Ecclesiastes commentary, Philip Graham Ryken writes, “Our desires are always traveling, but never arriving. This is the wanderlust of the human soul.” We are constantly reaching and striving, looking for more, and being constantly dissatisfied with our lives. And while we know of the hope we have in Christ, this is not yet a reality for the Preacher.
So, thus far, in Ecclesiastes, we are not given much hope for life in general. It will be disappointing, unsatisfying, and meaningless. The Preacher has not yet suggested the possibility of hope for something that fulfills us. The Preacher writes, “I have tested all this by wisdom, I resolved, ‘I will be wise,’ but it was beyond me” (Ecc. 7:23). He fails. Wisdom fails. There is no answer because it is so far beyond him, that he cannot even attempt to approach it. At the end of chapter 7, the Preacher tells us this much, “…I have discovered that God made people upright, but they pursued many schemes” (Ecc. 7:29). God created us to be holy, righteous, and good, and humans screwed it up. Story of my life. Well, the story of the world, really. Yeah, hope is a pipe dream.
Humans must be essentially hopeful creatures, even if we do not realize it. Our dissatisfaction with the brokenness of the world is enough to tell us this. We inherently believe that there is something better out there, somewhere. Even the Preacher gives proof to our hope because he continues his search for the meaning of life despite every attempt failing. This brings to mind Thomas Edison and his many attempts to create the light bulb. The quote that I found might not actually have been said by Edison, but it does at least illustrate his process: “‘I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.’” The Preacher shows us the many ways we cannot find meaning in life, and slowly but surely, he is narrowing in on “the way that will work.”
This post moves us solidly into the second half of Ecclesiastes, where the author will continue his argument about the meaninglessness of life, but he will also finally delve more into the answer that he has been skirting around for much of the book – fearing God.
Side Note: I did not spend time discussing Ecclesiastes 7:13, but in my research, I came across a Scottish theologian named Thomas Boston, who published a sermon called The Crook in the Lot shortly before his death in 1732. His sermon deals with the concepts in Ecc. 7:13, which is essentially that we are all given our lots in life, but not one of them is perfect; all are “crooked” in some way. How do we handle the “trouble or difficulty in life we wish we could change but cannot alter” (Ryken)? If you want to read more, you can check out Thomas Boston’s short book The Crook in the Lot. Keep in mind, it was written in the 1730s, so the language and style are older than what we currently use.
