To everything there is a season. You may have heard Christians referencing a difficult period in their life as a season. When you’re between jobs, dealing with sickness, or having relationship problems, you may be told “you’re just living through a difficult season”. Ecclesiastes is where the season metaphor comes from and built into it is an assumption that seasons will come and go. Which is to say, this isn’t forever, but don’t expect it to stay gone forever either. The only time you’re truly done with seasons of suffering is after death. So when you pray to see the other side of a difficult season, understand what you’re asking for and what you may receive. If you ask for an end to any current or future suffering in this life, you will likely not receive it because you pray wrongly (James 4:3). Your seasons may not be equally long, either. You may bounce between seasons of difficulty only briefly broken up by seasons of joy. You may experience one long period of suffering only interrupted by your death and others may appear to never experience suffering at all.

The good news, as we’re often told by Christian brothers and pastors, is that “God won’t give you more than you can handle”. Which is absolutely false and not in the Bible at all. What they’re trying to refer to is 1 Corinthians 10:13, which says “….God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” This paints a clearer picture, though you still may be tempted to turn to the Greek and translate to “suffer” rather than “tempted”. Fine, but this is still about God never letting you be boxed out of RELYING on Him. You will never be in such dire straits that you can’t TRUST God. Anyone suggesting that God is a vehicle to remove suffering from your life or bring material prosperity to you is misleading you. THIS life sucks. THIS life will wear you down. OUR faith as Christians is in the NEXT life with one who loves us.

None of this is very comforting, I understand completely. There’s hurt in my life NOW, there’s uncertainty NOW. The eternal sounds great but there might still be a lot of living to do between now and then and frankly I’m not feeling it.

Alright, that makes sense. You don’t want to have to sit in the theater to finish 2 hours of a movie you already hate, you want to walk out. But that’s why Ecclesiastes and Solomon are here to remind us that these things come and go and there’s more room to find joy in your life than you realize, especially when you make effort to look and lean deeper into God while doing so. You still need to make it across the finish line fairly. Cheating to the end is immediate disqualification and no prize is awarded. If you didn’t like the race, you’re going to hate the penalty for cheating. Be mindful of the eternal for that reason if for no other.

The teacher tells us, by explaining the various seasons, that life can be as wonderful as it is miserable. There’s great joy but behind it, an ominous shadow of troubles sure to come. Most of these are self explanatory but some benefit from explanation. A time to be born/die serves an important role setting the stage because this pairing is uniquely out of our control and entirely in God’s. Something to consider about that placement. “A time to kill” is not the same word as murder, this would be about warfighting/death penalties. Could be colorful language to describe conflict in general as contrasted by “a time to heal”. I’ve seen someone suggest this is in reference to “dying to yourself for Christ” but I think that’s a stretch considering it’s compared to “a time to heal”. Mourning is compared to dancing because in the biblical times, mourning was a full-on spectacle. They would wear sackcloth, fast, have very public lamentations. Dancing is a similar “celebration” but for pleasant things, obviously. “Casting away stones” refers to clearing a field so you could plant crops, so this can be expanded to removing the obstacles from your life. Gathering stones together is just referring to building things, to include community. To “refrain from embracing” can mean rejecting cultural practices contrary to God, enforcing personal boundaries, or just making time to be alone.

Once again we see a mention of hate so we take a quick detour. This is a fallen world we live in and while the Bible doesn’t promote personal hatred, there are times when hatred of evil and sin are appropriate. You can hate abortion and the “position” of abortionists but you cannot hate Dave, the abortionist. Systems, titles, and behaviors contrary to God can be hated but the person sinning needs Jesus as much as we do.

The teacher comes back to a previous question asking what the worker gains from toil? Not “work”, but “toil”. Toil suggests seriously demanding and intense labor with a strong undercurrent of unpleasantness and weariness. Work was given to us by God but toil is a curse from the fall, so what is the lasting value of this toiling? An answer is suggested in his follow-up where he says he’s seen what God has laid upon man to occupy them. “To occupy them”. Idle hands are the devils playthings after all, so if you’re toiling, you have neither the time nor energy to engage in sin. Besides which, trials are how souls are strengthened. The profit a man gains from his toil becomes clear: richness in eternity. The world that was given to us is filled with beauty but our human minds can only perceive so much of God’s intent (next to nothing) and we don’t know what’s playing out behind the scenes. So while we yearn for eternity and search for eternal meaning, especially while toiling in work and suffering the myriad discomforts of life, we need to trust that our God is good and that His plans are divinely to our benefit.

The teacher knows that there’s nothing better for man than to rejoice (in God’s presence) and to do good (align with God’s commandments and live a life that reflects His character). Eating and drinking are to be enjoyed, both as a celebration of your sustenance and nourishment and as opportunities for community and fellowship, as eating events often are. We say grace in thanks for the food we take in because we know not even that much is promised to us and we’re grateful to God to have it. We should also try to find joy and purpose in our daily tasks. This isn’t limited to our day job, but things like grocery shopping or doing the dishes. Satisfaction in labor is honoring God as we’re called not to work for our boss, our family, or whoever the labor is for, but we work for God. Our boss doesn’t see us go above and beyond, but God does. He suggests the fact that we can derive joy from any of this is a gift in itself from God, meaning that the joy is not innate to the activity, but bestowed upon us as we do it by God. So be thankful not just for the good in your life but for the ability to enjoy them as well.

God is eternal and unchanging and all He does will endure forever. God gives us marvels so that we may fear Him. Fear, in this sense, not being that terror experienced in the face of a threat, but awe and reverence. “The fear of God is the beginning of knowledge,” as the Proverb says. The more you know about God and the more you’re able to understand Him, the greater He is and the more shocking and awe-inspiring He should be to you. If you don’t recognize it now, you will when judged by the Lord. There is nothing new among humanity and we all fall into the same repeated patterns of sin demonstrated by the generations before us and will be mimicked by the generations after us, but God sees all and will judge us nonetheless. The teacher even notes that the places of righteousness have fallen to wickedness. At the time, this may have meant the judges/teachers of Solomon’s era or it could be pointing to the Pharisees dealt with by Jesus. Corruption where there should be purity is nothing new to man and points to the need for a divine judge to be fair and righteous. God tests us to humble us and show that we’re not so much greater than the animals. We fall to sin when we should be pure and we die like any other creature. Unlike the animals though, humans can reason and therefore life a life concerned less with merely eating and reproducing and instead centered on God and His holiness.