In Awe of God
Text: Ecclesiastes 3:9-22
If any of you took up the challenge to read Ecclesiastes all the way through, you may have found it to be a frustrating and maybe circular read. Appropriate for the season of Lent, its observations about life can certainly come across as being far more cynical and jaded than other parts of the Bible. That is deliberate. Ecclesiastes represents part of the wisdom tradition of scripture, which we’re not that familiar with already. Within Biblical wisdom itself, there are a few different streams of thought, and much of Ecclesiastes finds itself calling into question what is often accepted as “conventional” wisdom
I said earlier that one of the reasons why Ecclesiastes has such an appeal for Lent is that it offers observations about our life and relationship with God while allowing room for doubt and uncertainty. I think many of us have been raised with the notion that doubt and uncertainty are not compatible with our faith in God… and yet throughout Ecclesiastes, the Teacher acknowledges that there is a limit to what we can truly understand. Uncertainty is a reality of life, and any attempts to deny it is, in fact, an exercise in vanity. Ecclesiastes shows us that we can indeed explore our faith with some doubt and uncertainty… and in fact that is a healthy approach.
There is a saying that we go to school to learn how much we don’t know. People that I know who have pursued post-graduate work observe that in becoming very knowledgeable about one subject, they begin realize how much they don’t know or don’t understand about other subjects. Part of it has to do with the level of detail that we can get into on thing, but we cannot get into the same level of detail with all things. We can know a little about a lot of things, or a lot about a few things… but we cannot know a lot about a lot of things. There’s nothing new under the sun: Ecclesiastes made this observation 2500 years ago… the more he learned, the less he felt he really knew.
So where are going with this? What does this have to do with our relationship with God?
The parts of Ecclesiastes that you heard me read earlier come after that most famous of passages that we heard two weeks ago. Some of it is a repeat, but most of it is new. The Teacher is being very deliberate about reminding us that as human beings we are limited, and yet we do have a gift to be able to stop and step back from the moment and catch a brief glimpse of eternity. Even so, we cannot truly understand the totality of it all, precisely because we have limitations as human beings. Awareness of our limitations is fundamental in cultivating awe of God.
The more we learn, the less we really know… and in fact the more we realize how much of our lives really are in God’s hands.
Biblical wisdom isn’t just a collection of these trite sayings that really have no depth. I think we overlook it all too often because it demands our attention in such a way that a short devotional, or a short reading can really allow. The Teacher has spent a lifetime of considering these questions, observing the world, and placing it into the context of our relationship with God.
On one hand he comes across as being downright agnostic in places. Much to the chagrin of most of us, in the closing verses of Chapter three, he actually raises the question of life after death without providing a definitive answer.
This is not because of a sense of doubt, far from it… but more a genuine and honest realization that what happens to us after we die is truly in God’s hands. If anything, the Teacher is cautioning us against overstating our case and our place in the universe… Oddly enough, in his pursuit of wisdom, the Teacher is very reluctant to make declarations to know about those things that is exclusively God’s territory. For Ecclesiastes, any such pursuit is vanity… because we are in danger of speaking for God when we have no business doing so. We cannot know for sure, because we are not God, we have our limitations. What is more important is to place ourselves in God’s hands and to trust that our lives have meaning, even if we can’t figure it out on our own.
The one thing that he keeps coming back to is this aspect of the enjoyment of life. In the midst of what many consider to be these almost despairing lines of thought, Ecclesiastes keeps coming back to the line that there is nothing better for us to than to eat and drink and take pleasure in all our work. In other words… enjoy life because it is a gift from God.
Maybe this is something we need to pay attention to… I think too often we’ve spent time trying to earn God’s favour, rather than to realize that we already have it. Life in and of itself is a gift to be treasured, cherished, and enjoyed… but it’s not something that we deserve or earn.
I have a question for you. How many of you chose to be born? How many of you earned the right to become a living breathing human being? Didn’t think so… None of us asked to be born, and none of us had any control over the circumstances of our own birth. Life is a gift that was handed to us whether we wanted it or not… whether we think we deserve it or not… So the Teacher is asking us what we are doing with this gift that God has given us? Are we enjoying it? Are we helping others enjoy it?
But this whole “enjoy” business throws us off guard. One of the things that we have working against us is our so-called puritanical heritage. My Dad describes Puritanism as a deep-seated fear that somewhere somebody is having fun. Our work is for the glory of God and therefore must be taken seriously, and if we’re having fun, we’re not taking it seriously…
But in light of the Teacher’s wisdom, it throws that whole mindset into doubt, because in fact, our purpose in life is to enjoy it. After all, and I’ve quoted this before, “what is the chief end of man?” – “To glorify God and enjoy him forever!”
So it is a Spiritual Discipline to enjoy life!
During Lent, it can be a discipline for to actually take a moment to stop being so busy and appreciate simply being alive... rather than consumed by the next thing coming. The schedule can wait, the to-do list can be put aside, and spend time with life… and by extension… spending time with God. After all, we can be so busy making a living that we forget how to live.
Yesterday, I got up to do my usual Saturday morning routine. Get up early, get Megan out of bed, and hustle us off for Sportball here at the church for 9:00am. Instead of turning on the light, as Megan was still asleep, I opened one of the shutters in her room. A bright ray of sun blazed into the room, lighting up a large array of floating particles in the air. My first thought was “ew… dust…” and then followed by “great… another thing to do on my list of things to do…” the house hasn’t been dusted in a while… and I’m not sure when I’d get the time. Sighing to myself I turned to the business of dragging my sleepy daughter out of bed, because we had a schedule to keep.
Once Megan had fully woken up and dressed, I put her down on the floor so that we could walk downstairs. She looked up, saw the beam of light, and all those free floating particles lazily drifting about the room… “Look Daddy, Sparkles!!!”
The look on her face was one of absolute glee. She had a huge open-mouthed smile, and her inquisitive eyes were wide with wonder… She saw something magical in something I saw as just another thing to do.
I gave her a huge hug. For a brief moment I remembered my own moments as a child, appreciating the dancing dust in a sunbeam…and thanks to the wisdom of a child, I got a glimpse of maybe the way that God wants us to see the world. That sense of Awe and wonder of the things around us, when I was too busy with all the things I had to do to really appreciate it.
When it comes to our own lives, and our own relationships, how often do we take a moment to simply enjoy them for what they are? Maybe as we walk to the cross this Lent, maybe Jesus is calling us to see the world as it was meant to be… without the burdens that we lay upon ourselves, or the world lays upon us, or that we might lay upon others… After all, Jesus did say “come to me, all you who are carry heavy burdens and I will give you rest…” Ecclesiastes is trying to point out the same thing… how often do we really take a moment to stop and enjoy what life has to offer?
Maybe we need to try a bit more often. Maybe we need to consciously enjoy life, by setting aside those things that demand of our time, even if only for a moment. Maybe we also need to be conscious to let others do the same, and that our demands on others can wait. As we continue through Lent, reflecting on some of this wisdom from an ancient Teacher, maybe we need to see some sparkles, when all we see is dust.
Amen.
If any of you took up the challenge to read Ecclesiastes all the way through, you may have found it to be a frustrating and maybe circular read. Appropriate for the season of Lent, its observations about life can certainly come across as being far more cynical and jaded than other parts of the Bible. That is deliberate. Ecclesiastes represents part of the wisdom tradition of scripture, which we’re not that familiar with already. Within Biblical wisdom itself, there are a few different streams of thought, and much of Ecclesiastes finds itself calling into question what is often accepted as “conventional” wisdom
I said earlier that one of the reasons why Ecclesiastes has such an appeal for Lent is that it offers observations about our life and relationship with God while allowing room for doubt and uncertainty. I think many of us have been raised with the notion that doubt and uncertainty are not compatible with our faith in God… and yet throughout Ecclesiastes, the Teacher acknowledges that there is a limit to what we can truly understand. Uncertainty is a reality of life, and any attempts to deny it is, in fact, an exercise in vanity. Ecclesiastes shows us that we can indeed explore our faith with some doubt and uncertainty… and in fact that is a healthy approach.
There is a saying that we go to school to learn how much we don’t know. People that I know who have pursued post-graduate work observe that in becoming very knowledgeable about one subject, they begin realize how much they don’t know or don’t understand about other subjects. Part of it has to do with the level of detail that we can get into on thing, but we cannot get into the same level of detail with all things. We can know a little about a lot of things, or a lot about a few things… but we cannot know a lot about a lot of things. There’s nothing new under the sun: Ecclesiastes made this observation 2500 years ago… the more he learned, the less he felt he really knew.
So where are going with this? What does this have to do with our relationship with God?
The parts of Ecclesiastes that you heard me read earlier come after that most famous of passages that we heard two weeks ago. Some of it is a repeat, but most of it is new. The Teacher is being very deliberate about reminding us that as human beings we are limited, and yet we do have a gift to be able to stop and step back from the moment and catch a brief glimpse of eternity. Even so, we cannot truly understand the totality of it all, precisely because we have limitations as human beings. Awareness of our limitations is fundamental in cultivating awe of God.
The more we learn, the less we really know… and in fact the more we realize how much of our lives really are in God’s hands.
Biblical wisdom isn’t just a collection of these trite sayings that really have no depth. I think we overlook it all too often because it demands our attention in such a way that a short devotional, or a short reading can really allow. The Teacher has spent a lifetime of considering these questions, observing the world, and placing it into the context of our relationship with God.
On one hand he comes across as being downright agnostic in places. Much to the chagrin of most of us, in the closing verses of Chapter three, he actually raises the question of life after death without providing a definitive answer.
This is not because of a sense of doubt, far from it… but more a genuine and honest realization that what happens to us after we die is truly in God’s hands. If anything, the Teacher is cautioning us against overstating our case and our place in the universe… Oddly enough, in his pursuit of wisdom, the Teacher is very reluctant to make declarations to know about those things that is exclusively God’s territory. For Ecclesiastes, any such pursuit is vanity… because we are in danger of speaking for God when we have no business doing so. We cannot know for sure, because we are not God, we have our limitations. What is more important is to place ourselves in God’s hands and to trust that our lives have meaning, even if we can’t figure it out on our own.
The one thing that he keeps coming back to is this aspect of the enjoyment of life. In the midst of what many consider to be these almost despairing lines of thought, Ecclesiastes keeps coming back to the line that there is nothing better for us to than to eat and drink and take pleasure in all our work. In other words… enjoy life because it is a gift from God.
Maybe this is something we need to pay attention to… I think too often we’ve spent time trying to earn God’s favour, rather than to realize that we already have it. Life in and of itself is a gift to be treasured, cherished, and enjoyed… but it’s not something that we deserve or earn.
I have a question for you. How many of you chose to be born? How many of you earned the right to become a living breathing human being? Didn’t think so… None of us asked to be born, and none of us had any control over the circumstances of our own birth. Life is a gift that was handed to us whether we wanted it or not… whether we think we deserve it or not… So the Teacher is asking us what we are doing with this gift that God has given us? Are we enjoying it? Are we helping others enjoy it?
But this whole “enjoy” business throws us off guard. One of the things that we have working against us is our so-called puritanical heritage. My Dad describes Puritanism as a deep-seated fear that somewhere somebody is having fun. Our work is for the glory of God and therefore must be taken seriously, and if we’re having fun, we’re not taking it seriously…
But in light of the Teacher’s wisdom, it throws that whole mindset into doubt, because in fact, our purpose in life is to enjoy it. After all, and I’ve quoted this before, “what is the chief end of man?” – “To glorify God and enjoy him forever!”
So it is a Spiritual Discipline to enjoy life!
During Lent, it can be a discipline for to actually take a moment to stop being so busy and appreciate simply being alive... rather than consumed by the next thing coming. The schedule can wait, the to-do list can be put aside, and spend time with life… and by extension… spending time with God. After all, we can be so busy making a living that we forget how to live.
Yesterday, I got up to do my usual Saturday morning routine. Get up early, get Megan out of bed, and hustle us off for Sportball here at the church for 9:00am. Instead of turning on the light, as Megan was still asleep, I opened one of the shutters in her room. A bright ray of sun blazed into the room, lighting up a large array of floating particles in the air. My first thought was “ew… dust…” and then followed by “great… another thing to do on my list of things to do…” the house hasn’t been dusted in a while… and I’m not sure when I’d get the time. Sighing to myself I turned to the business of dragging my sleepy daughter out of bed, because we had a schedule to keep.
Once Megan had fully woken up and dressed, I put her down on the floor so that we could walk downstairs. She looked up, saw the beam of light, and all those free floating particles lazily drifting about the room… “Look Daddy, Sparkles!!!”
The look on her face was one of absolute glee. She had a huge open-mouthed smile, and her inquisitive eyes were wide with wonder… She saw something magical in something I saw as just another thing to do.
I gave her a huge hug. For a brief moment I remembered my own moments as a child, appreciating the dancing dust in a sunbeam…and thanks to the wisdom of a child, I got a glimpse of maybe the way that God wants us to see the world. That sense of Awe and wonder of the things around us, when I was too busy with all the things I had to do to really appreciate it.
When it comes to our own lives, and our own relationships, how often do we take a moment to simply enjoy them for what they are? Maybe as we walk to the cross this Lent, maybe Jesus is calling us to see the world as it was meant to be… without the burdens that we lay upon ourselves, or the world lays upon us, or that we might lay upon others… After all, Jesus did say “come to me, all you who are carry heavy burdens and I will give you rest…” Ecclesiastes is trying to point out the same thing… how often do we really take a moment to stop and enjoy what life has to offer?
Maybe we need to try a bit more often. Maybe we need to consciously enjoy life, by setting aside those things that demand of our time, even if only for a moment. Maybe we also need to be conscious to let others do the same, and that our demands on others can wait. As we continue through Lent, reflecting on some of this wisdom from an ancient Teacher, maybe we need to see some sparkles, when all we see is dust.
Amen.
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