Mackenzie Rice

Ecclesiastes 7:1-14
A good name is better than precious ointment,
and the day of death than the day of birth.
It is better to go to the house of mourning
than to go to the house of feasting,
for this is the end of all mankind,
and the living will lay it to heart.
Sorrow is better than laughter,
for by sadness of face the heart is made glad.
The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning,
but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.
It is better for a man to hear the rebuke of the wise
than to hear the song of fools.
For as the crackling of thorns under a pot,
so is the laughter of the fools; this also is vanity.
Surely oppression drives the wise into madness,
and a bribe corrupts the heart.
Better is the end of a thing than its beginning,
and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.
Be not quick in your spirit to become angry,
for anger lodges in the heart of fools.
Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?”
For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.

Wisdom is good with an inheritance, an advantage to those who see the sun. For the protection of wisdom is like the protection of money, and the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of him who has it. Consider the work of God: who can make straight what he has made crooked? 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.

Reflection:
When I was five, like most kids my age, I had to eat all of my vegetables before I could even ask to have dessert. But, like most kids my age, vegetables didn’t seem good to me, so I would sit at the table and refuse to take another bite of green beans. Then, when the cookies from my grandparents came out, I’d be upset and unable to fathom why I couldn’t have dessert. Green beans didn’t seem good at the moment, but it can be painfully hard to learn what’s truly ‘good’ in life.

I have two younger brothers whom I love dearly. After school, they frequently want to play rough, however, consistently, the rough game escalates. I warn them, saying the touch football-turned tackle football won’t end well, but they continue to play tackle. Suddenly, someone gets a scratch or a bump and the world stops turning. Tackle football seemed good at the moment, but that “good” was fleeting.

Just prior to this passage Ecclesiastes 6 ends with a challenging question: “What is good?” And as if to answer the question, the words “good” (or “better”) appear frequently within these first verses of chapter 7. However, what turns out to be good isn’t really what we’d expect. With phrases like, “sorrow is better than laughter” and “the day of death [is] better than the day of birth,” the teacher in Ecclesiastes lauds the things we desperately strive to avoid. Perhaps like me, you feel disappointed by these answers. In fact, these answers really do not make sense!

However, we can glean some spiritual truths that we will see echoed in teachings from Jesus himself. When we are confronted by sorrow and by the losses that disrupt our lives, this is good. This sorrow is good, not because death is good, but because it invites us to consider our own ends, to consider who we are outside of the genuinely good-yet-fleeting things that happen to us. Any good we encounter on this earth, the feasting, the laughter, the mirth … all of this, is fleeting, passing away, and ultimately does not provide lasting satisfaction. At some point, the party dies down, people go home, and we’re left settling down back into the difficulties we face in the day-to-day. The celebration and the feasting, the laughter and the singing, they are certainly good and certainly have a place in our lives, but they can only distract us for a little bit of time. Ultimately we’re left no closer to finding the satisfaction and ultimate good that we’re looking for.

But Ecclesiastes shows us that the wise live according to two fundamental truths. Number one: the day of good is not permanent in this life. We don’t chase it. We don’t cling to it as it comes. We enjoy it as a gift from God, recognizing that life can change in an instant. Number two: we are not in control of what each day will bring but are called to a life of surrender. We have an innate desire to live our best lives now, according to our terms of what is good. God invites us to trust that God intends for us to experience God’s goodness even in the midst of unpleasant and even deeply painful circumstances. With God, our lives are better than we can fathom.

Prayer:
Awesome God, when the ever-so-carefully calculated distractions are removed, it’s easy to be consumed by the overwhelming and depressing world. Please, Lord, fill my life with your goodness and free me from the burden of creating a happy life. Teach me to learn what is ‘good’ by your definition and continue to remind me that You are the ultimate good. Amen.