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.

A Poem

I can't remember the last time I wrote a poem, but I think it has to be more than a decade ago. The first few lines spontaneously sprang to mind on a wild and wet coastal walk. So, without further ado...

I Worship You

Wind whipped white caps on a sea of muddy slate
Sideways rain sweeps over the land, stinging my face
All this power is nothing at all compared to you
I’m in awe of all that you are, I worship you
As I stand in this place, I am awed by your grace
I throw open my arm, I’m enthralled by your charms
And I worship you

We visit the doctor searching for reasons for the pain
He says it’s cancer and that’s not the answer we hoped he’d explain
My child is sick and I can’t make sense of the suffering
I know you’re here but I can’t help wondering what to think
As I take it in, my head starts to spin
In this desperate hour, I’m in need of your power
And I worship you

Hate filled cries ring overhead screaming “God is great”
Rocks are thrown and bullets reply there is no restraint
Peace refuses to break out and calm declines to reign
As the blood flows, the guilt grows there’s no end of pain
In times like this, there’s an absence of bliss
Your voice seems so distant; I want you in this instant
And I worship you

Gifts and Brussel Sprouts

One of the interesting things about serving the Lord is the seeming delight He takes in surprising us.  Sometimes these are sweet surprises, unexpected blessings or gifts that we are eager to unwrap.  However, there are times when these “gifts” don’t feel quite as much like presents, but more like someone stuck some brussel sprouts onto our plate when we weren’t looking.  I remember as a kid sometimes reaching over and skewering an olive or other attractive morsel from my brother’s plate when he was distracted, but I’m certain I never swiped a brussel sprout.

It is interesting how quick we are to name gifts and trials, blessings and curses.  I know that I label them based on my most immediate experience of them.  If the thing feels good or I experience it as fun then it must be a gift, a blessing, God is smiling down on me.  If the thing is painful or I feel anxious or afraid then it is a trial or even a curse, God is distant or frowning at me.   Of course, hindsight often changes our perspective on things.  After the immediate has passed, we can view the results with more objectivity.  Sometimes in those moments we have a sort of epiphany and realize that the thing we called as curse was really a blessing in disguise.  A gift wrapped in pain or frustration.

I wonder what my experience of life would be if I really believed that everything, absolutely everything, was really under the control, the absolute control, of a being that loves me and cares for me even more and better than I love and care for my kids?  I am not saying that pain and suffering would cease.  These things will be with us until the end of the world.  But if I really believed that God was in charge of pain and suffering, perhaps I could endure them as a necessary part of my training.  I remember a coach in high school who pushed us to run until it hurt and then to run some more.  He knew that we were capable of more than we thought we were able to do.  He pushed us past the end of ourselves and we discovered something beyond the last frontier of endurance.

If everything really comes from my loving Father God, then perhaps the suffering is not simply meaningless pain, but is redemptive.  Perhaps there is a redeeming value, a redeeming purpose in it.  Perhaps God, like the coach, knows something that I don't know.  One of the miracles of the incarnation is that God actually knows our pain.  He learned through His own suffering.  So, when He sovereignly surprises us with suffering He knows what it means; He has been there and done that.  Somehow viewing it from this perspective makes it more bearable even if it is still unpalatable. I won't be looking for pain any more than I'll be surreptitiously skewering brussel sprouts, but perhaps I can stop muttering against the chef.

The Invitation

The invitation is to follow Christ.  He makes no promises about the destination or even what will happen on the journey.  Sure, there is the promise of the ultimate destination when the journey is all over, and there is the promise that He will always be with us on the journey.  Not to minimize these, but what about the everyday promises? What about food on the table and a roof over your head?  What about healthy kids and good friends?  What about the respect of those you admire or those you lead?  What about all the things that we have been led to expect from life, from God?  Does He promise these?

If I believe what the Christian bookstores sell, then yes, He does, but I don't believe them.  I don't believe that "every day with Jesus is sweeter than the one before."  I don't believe that He promises that we will be healthy, wealthy, and wise.  I don't believe that following Him will always lead to light and bliss.  I don't believe that we'll always come out on top (in this world) or that we will be rewarded for doing the right thing.  Sometimes doing the right thing means being executed, or slowly being starved to death.  Sometimes following Jesus leads us into trouble not away from it.  A quick examination of the lives of the prophets, or the lives of the vast majority of Christians in our time and the ages before us, shows us that it is an anomaly to have a nice life and also follow Christ.

So, I reject the "face value wisdom and happy lies" that promise something that Jesus never actually promised.  He did promise that He would be with us.  He promised that He would send us the Spirit to comfort us and to lead us.  He promised that He would complete the good work that He began in us.  Ah, there's the rub.  To complete the good work of redeeming my soul and making me more like Himself, He has to lance the painful, infected, places in my soul.  He has to take me to face the hurt, the darkness, the pain in my own soul.  It's not just that there is sin "out there", that the world is sick and infected and therefore not as it should be and so we suffer in this world.  It's that I am sick and infected and not as I should be. 

So, I choose again today to follow Him.  Not because it will be easy, or will lead to all the worldly happiness that I crave, but because He is God and He is good.  He is good even when He takes me by the hand and leads me down in to valley of the shadow of death.  For dying to myself is a real death with real suffering.  I believe that He inflicts this pain because it is the only way for me to be healed.  I hate the pain, but I love the soul surgeon who inflicts it.