What's the point?

This life is not the most comfortable, is it? Sometimes it is hard work just living! Sometimes it feels like life is a random mix of issues and experiences. It’s not that I’m complaining. I’m just reflecting on life under the sun. What do we gain from our work, from our sacrifice? What does the worker gain from his toil?

In Ecclesiastes 3, Solomon asks it this way:

What does the worker gain from his toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil—this is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him.

This passage comes immediately after the most quoted section of Ecclesiastes, where Solomon lists all the various seasons of life and activities under heaven. As he ponders all the things that come into our lives, some delightful, some painful and everything in between, he comes to the question of gain. He is essentially asking, “What do we get out of all this? What is the point?”

As he ruminates, he recognizes the sovereignty of God. He points out the God shaped hole in our hearts and the limitations of our understanding. He says that if this world is all there is, the best we can hope for is to eat, drink, and enjoy our work. Even the ability to enjoy our work is a gift from God. But Solomon pushes deeper into the mystery. There must be more!

He then returns to the mystery of God’s implacable sovereignty. We hear echoes of Psalm 115:3 as Solomon extols God and irresistible and unchangeable will. But the why question remains. Why does God do these things? Why does He fill our lives with pain as well as pleasure? Why is their war as well as peace, hate as well as love, weeping as well as laughter?

The key to understanding this passage is the very last sentence. “God does it so that men will revere him.”

Reverence is the only right response of a creature before their Creator. Therefore, God’s goal in all that He does under the sun is to restore the right relationship between us and Him. All the seasons and experiences of our life are a gift from Him to realign our hearts with His. God is freely and creatively doing whatever is best for us, whatever will form us more completely into the likeness of His Son. God measures out, into our lives, exactly what we need to renew our perspective and draw us into right relationship with Him.

What do we gain from our toil?  What is the pay off for slogging through the peaks and valleys of life? We gain an ever deepening relationship with God. We gain God Himself.