Even the godliest people need to occasionally pull over, ask some diagnostic questions, and make adjustments. In this section of Ecclesiastes we are going to pull over for a soul pit stop and have Solomon run diagnostics on our soul with nine questions to get us healed up, tuned up, and back to enjoying life with God.
In Western culture, the adults have invented a new game that I like to call “Climb the Ladder.” In Climb the Ladder you look at those people who are above you on the rungs of success. You spend so much time looking at life on their rung – such as the car they drive, house they live in, clothes they wear, food they eat, and social events they enjoy – that when you look down at your rung beneath them you find yourself unhappy.
Continuing in the Ecclesiastes series, Pastor Mark Driscoll is preaching out of Ecclesiastes 5:8-20 on the class conflict between the rich and the poor.
When was the last time you met with God? When is the last time you gathered with God’s people for corporate worship? What was the attitude in your heart and mind? Did you come prepared to meet with God, or just roll in and roll out to be entertained as if the point of a worship service was the same as a concert or movie – to put on a good performance for you?
he world is filled with people, and it is tough to figure out which ones you should befriend, allow access to, take advice from, and do life with.
If there is no good God who sees and knows all and judges justly in the end, then there is truly no hope for justice in this life. All we are left with is social Darwinism, might makes right, the fittest survive, and the rest of us just get to be the human shield here to stop the bullets from getting to the bourgeoisie.
Do you think you’ve ever worked a day in vain? Do you think you’ve ever shed a tear in vain? Do you think you’ve ever read a Bible verse in vain? Do you think you’ve ever confessed a sin in vain? Do you think a bullet has ever been fired in vain? Do you think a meal has ever been eaten in vain? No. God makes everything beautiful in its time. When? In its time! In HIS time!Do you think you’ve ever worked a day in vain? Do you think you’ve ever shed a tear in vain? Do you think you’ve ever read a Bible verse in vain? Do you think you’ve ever confessed a sin in vain? Do you think a bullet has ever been fired in vain? Do you think a meal has ever been eaten in vain? No. God makes everything beautiful in its time. When? In its time! In HIS time!
If you stop to think about your work, what it’s accomplishing, and why you should keep working, you will likely end up very discouraged, start wearing black, and listening to bands fronted by people whose dad did not hug them enough. But, this kind of reflection on “why we do what we do” is rare because we are so stressed out by our work that we lay awake at night, so overwhelmed by what we have to do that we don’t even have the time or energy to ask if we should be doing it.
Ecclesiastes: Meaningless Life? [Part 3] Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Misery: Ecclesiastes 2:1-11 In school, math was perhaps the most difficult subject for me. I was particularly bad at showing my work. On the rare occasion that I did get a problem correct in some convoluted way, my math teachers would mark my grade … Read more
Something has gone terribly wrong and no matter how many organizations we start, elections we hold, wars we fight, dollars we spend, attempts we make, protests we hold, medications we prescribe, bad guys we lock up, or tears we shed, the world is hopelessly crooked and cursed. This bothers us, so we want to straighten it out. The problem is that not only is everything on the earth crooked, so is everyone on the earth. We are all crooked. Every one of us.
There’s only so much you can put in a load before it becomes too heavy to carry. Life is like that. We can choose to carry our burdens and the burdens of others, but Jesus reminds us that if we take them to him, he’ll carry it for us.
There’s only so much you can put in a load before it becomes too heavy to carry. Life is like that. We can choose to carry our burdens and the burdens of others, but Jesus reminds us that if we take them to him, he’ll carry it for us.