Life as a Gift: Ecclesiastes part 2

Last week we looked at the book of Ecclesiastes as a way to see that all is vanity. And that the way we can understand that is to remember that we are people who are dependent on other things. And that the Teacher reminds us that we need something else, meaning is hard to discern on our own, we need a better interpretation.

And I reminded us to act on our limitations. If you are hungry, eat. If you are thirsty, drink. If you are tired, sleep. But use these as confessions of faith in something greater, as a way to recognize your dependency that is only ultimately found in Christ.

This week we will see another aspect of the vanity of life and how we still grapple for meaning but find things that are meaningful.

If last weeks invitation was to find wisdom as being dependent and to ask for help (from God Himself).

Then this week wisdom will be seeing life as a gift and and that our response will be an expression of gratitude.

Oops (a disruption): Finding Enjoyment

A few weeks ago my family and I went to the world’s largest buffet, according to the internet, while on vacation in Lancaster, PA.

It was quite the feat. We arrived on a thursday night during the dinner hour. We got into line and waited about 20 minutes just to pay. Then we got our tickets and waited another 10 just to get a seat. The buffet seated 1500 people, and it felt like we were standing next to all of them.

But for good reason. We got our seat and did the best thing we could do at the worlds largest buffet, we did a lap. We looked at all the options. There were a bunch of entrees, there was a cook to order steak station. You could get burgers, pizza, mac and cheese.

And then there is a giant salad bar and a bunch of sides. There is a table that contains a bunch of different kinds of breads. Then if you can imagine a kind of drink, it basically drops from the sky.

And the desserts. Tons of options for desserts along with any kind of combination you can think of. YOu can add tonnage of ice cream to it.

So far so good. So far we are heeding the advice of the teacher in Ecc 2

Ecclesiastes 2:24–25 ESV

There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?

So we got our first plates and oohed and aaahd at each others options. Then we went up again and again. But like all buffets you eventually begin to get full. Do you stop? Oh no. You treat it like people from Massachusetts treat a stop sign, its just a suggestion. You go up again.

Then you get dessert and maybe some coffee.

but you don’t leave a buffet the same way you came in. I entered with anticipation and joy, I left with shame and self loathing.

Ugh: Analyzing the disruption: Activities into Accumulation and Hobbies into Hoarding

We love to take what is good and joyful and turn it into something despicable. We can’t just be satisfied in the moment with something good, we seem to need to collect as much as we possibly can and consume it until we hate the world. We things the joy is in consuming as much as possible. Collecting as much as possible. But it never works

Because we are never satisfied, it is usually not enough to be able to just enjoy something. We are not satisfied with just enough in our hobbies and activities. We have to have the best. We have to collect more than one. We bypass satisfaction for collection thinking that will be enough but it never is

But we turn activities into accumulation and our hobbies into hoarding. We can’t just enjoy something, we often have to win at it. get the most of it. We turn what is normal and good into some kind of twisted heap of consumer based need gone crazy. Note 68d1e.1a.2: bear://x-callback-url/open-note?id=A7F37027-1E6B-49B1-B184-EB509EADCADB)

Ecclesiastes 6:7–9 ESV

All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied. For what advantage has the wise man over the fool? And what does the poor man have who knows how to conduct himself before the living? Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the appetite: this also is vanity and a striving after wind.

We are always looking for what could be and possibility but never satisfied for what things actually are

Look at this picture from a different buffet that exemplifies this kind of accumulation of food. We think we need more and more but end up wasting 100 pounds of food.

And it’s all a little silly to think about the complexity of life through a buffet line but I wonder how quickly we move from enjoyment to accumulation in our lives?

We work so hard to assign meaning to the things in our lives that we forget to enjoy it. We take things as given. something to be accumulated, not as gifts to be received

Aha (Ignition, looking toward a solution): Life is a gift to be received, not a given to be taken

The teacher in Ecclesiastes is showing not only how hard it can be to find meaning, but also how easy it is for us to miss it when it comes. That we can experience something that can cause us joy but easily allow for the sense of accumulation or envy or competition to take over and it is no longer something we can enjoy for joy’s sake. It is something we must have, we must conquer.

Again, the teacher isn’t saying there is no meaning, or that we should just give up. He is just admitting to the problem. Life is hard, it is random, we cannot control it. We all face the unknown in every circumstance. And instead of pretending like he has it all figured out, he admits it. IT is all vanity! I’m not sure.

But still, in saying that all is vanity, and in saying that it is all striving after the wind, in saying meaning is hard to come by, he is not saying that there isn’t any good in the world. In fact he is saying there are good things in the world.

But instead of treating them as items to be collected, we can treat them as gifts to be received.

All of life is a gift, not a given.

Ecclesiastes 5:18–20 ESV

Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is his lot. Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil—this is the gift of God. For he will not much remember the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart.

The gift of God is to enjoy what we are given, to “eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun.”

This may sound contradictory. at one point he says that all is vanity. And now, all is a gift! which is it? The teacher is showing that meaning is hard to come by, so when you get the chance, stop and see life as a gift.

Enjoy moments in your life. Don’t accumulate. Don’t rush by. And notice that the things he mentions are not massive trips to the Caribbean or large gestures of wealth and luxury. He says enjoy what you eat and drink.

IN chapter four we are shown the gift of friendship

Ecclesiastes 4:9 ESV

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil.

And we do not just see the gift of life in the large things, but rather in every small thing. Life is not a series of accumulations but rather particular moments where we can see and hear and feel and know why life is good. The last meal you ate with friends. The last joke you laughed at. The last conversation you had with a friend.

The teacher recognizes that life is chaotic and that we need these particular moments to remember that there is meaning and that there is goodness in life.

Ecclesiastes points to the transient of everything. All things fade. Nothing is permanent. And so you see the teacher thumbing through every possible option. Sifting through all the variations of attempts to find something worthwhile in life.

And every once in a while, he lands on something that is good, something that he even calls a gift. A gift is something more than fragility and something more than what is transient. A gift requires a relationship. It means there must be a giver, and there must be a receiver. And this idea begins to give a little sense of a bedrock of the teachers frantic searching.

Gift giving is an intentional focus on the relationship between the giver and receiver.

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Receiving a gift forces, you to connect with the source of the gift. When you receive a gift, you recognize that the gift came from somewhere else. It did not appear, it did not just drop from the sky. It was given.

The Teacher doesn’t say that there isn’t any meaning he just says that meaning is hard to come by. And meeting is often blasted by the temporariness of life. And meaning as often blindsided by unforeseen future events that we can’t plan for. So because of that we can easily treat the gifts in life as givens, things to be collected. It is easy to turn back to life as a given instead of a gift.

It is easy to turn the events and material things in life into givens, only just fleeting pleasures, making them into competition and accumulation.

Seeing life as a gift shows us that there is a giver out there. That we have been given something worthwhile expressing some kind of gratitude, but that gratitude is not just spoken into the air, it is spoken to the One giving the gifts.

Whee (The Gospel): Christ has come to us in the incarnation

Look at this passage in Ecclesiastes Chapter 3.

Ecclesiastes 3:9–14 ESV

What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man. I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him.

The Teacher tells us to express gratitude for life as a gift. To take joy in the particular things that bring joy. And to express the joys in life as a gift reminds us that there is a giver.

And we don’t have to go far to find the giver. We see Him in the incarnation.

This is why God had to be become like us. He became flesh incarnate condescended to us. To know him is to know God, who has become like us, it’s an of God who embraced the suffering in the celebrations of humanity.

Colossians 1:15–17 ESV

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

This is our reality. Our ultimate joy. We see the unshakeable God in Christ. We see all things becoming new in Him. And so while we are surrounded with all sorts of things that rust and break. And things that we make into competitions and ruin, we are called to find joy in Christ who became one of us and like us.

Yeah (Life in the Gospel): Life is a Gift to be Received from God

Because we have a God who has given us life and life to be enjoyed we can enjoy what we are given as gifts.

We will come across gifts this week. Our role will be two things. 1) to recognize those things as gifts. 2) develop your relationship with the One who gives the gifts.

So, this week, eat dinner as a family. And stop to thank the Lord. This week grab some kind of food that you love. And take time to recognize the Lord. Cultivate a sense of gratitude. That life is to be received and is chaotic and random as it is, it is still beautiful because it can still be ultimately found in Christ.

Ecclesiastes reminds us that all things are fleeting. As they run by we can thank God that we can experience them and in turn, orient our lives back to God as the One who gave them in the first place.

Create a week where you look for and find joy, and you see life as a gift, very specifically given to us in Christ. He is the Source of every good gift

when you realize the gift of the things that come your way be reminded of Christ as gift who has come your way

I’ll conclude with a passage from a New Testament book of wisdom in James. He tells us that good gifts come from God, in whom there is no “variation or shadow” that is contributed to change.

When we express gratitude for the things in life as gifts, we recognize there is a God who gives them and who is unshakeable and does not change. He is reliable and can be trusted, even in the vanity of life.

James 1:17 ESV

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

Lewis, C.S. 2009. The Great Divorce. HarperOne.