Reflections from Ecclesiastes
Perhaps one of the strangest things about being human is that we can be happiest when we are most aware of how much we stand to lose.
You begin a marriage, and the world seems newly lit. Ordinary things become extraordinary because they are no longer experienced alone. You discover the joy of building a life together, of sharing little habits and private jokes, of looking towards a future that suddenly has a face beside yours. And somewhere beneath the happiness is the quiet knowledge that you cannot keep any of it by your own strength.
Ecclesiastes understands this strange mixture of delight and sorrow. Everything under the sun is beautiful, and everything under the sun is passing away.
Our bodies weaken. Our plans unravel. Even the loveliest seasons cannot be persuaded to stay. Sometimes, the fragility of life announces itself in great tragedies; sometimes, it arrives at the dinner table. When you have celiac disease, a meal can become an exercise in vigilance rather than pleasure. What is effortless for others requires questions, restrictions, and constant care. You can find yourself longing for something as ordinary as eating without fear, joining in without explanation, or simply receiving a meal as a gift rather than a calculation.
It is a peculiar grief to find difficulty in something so fundamental to being alive. And it reminds you that this world, for all its beauty, is not yet well. We are surrounded by gifts we cannot fully enjoy, joys we cannot permanently preserve, and bodies that cannot always do what we ask of them. The Preacher calls this vanity— not because nothing matters, but because nothing here can bear the weight of being everything.
We keep asking passing things to give us an everlasting home. Yet the answer is not to stop loving the world— though in some sense it is, but God forbid. A happy marriage is a good thing. Laughter around a table is a good thing. Friendship, beauty, work, rest, and the quiet pleasure of an ordinary day are good things. We ought to receive them with gratitude, not suspicion. Their passing does not make them worthless; it makes them precious.
But perhaps the ache we feel when they pass is telling us something. A beautiful song ends, and we wish it would continue. We watch the sun set and long to hold the light a little bit longer. We fall in love, and discover that even our greatest earthly happiness leaves us wanting a happiness that cannot be interrupted by death. It is as though the best things in this world awaken a homesickness for a country we have never seen.
Perhaps this is one reason God gives us such good things. Not to persuade us that earth is enough, but to teach us what we were made for. Still, it hurts to live in a world that gives with one hand and takes with the other. And Christianity does not ask us to pretend otherwise. We worship a crucified Saviour, a Lord who knew sorrow, hunger, suffering, and death. The cross tells us that God does not stand far away from the world's grief, offering tidy explanations. He enters it. And the empty tomb declares that grief will not have the final word.
Paul writes, “Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16).
There is a great hope hidden in those words. We are wasting away, and yet we are being renewed— both are true. Faith does not require us to deny the pain of the present; it teaches us to see the present in the light of what God has promised. Our weakness is real, but it is not eternal. Our suffering is real, but it is not sovereign. Our joys are real, but they are only the first-fruits of a joy yet to come.
And so we learn to live with open hands. We thank God for the beautiful seasons of life, even while knowing we cannot make ourselves immortal. We thank him for the meals we can enjoy, even while grieving the ones we cannot. We serve him in our strength and in our weakness, in our abundance and in our limitations. We do not wait for perfect circumstances before we begin to be faithful.
But neither do we make peace with death as though it were our rightful home. This is where I think we sometimes misunderstand contentment. To be content in Christ is not to become indifferent to the world's brokenness. It is not to look at suffering and say that it does not matter. It is to know that, because Christ has risen, we can face what is broken without surrendering to despair. We can enjoy this world without worshipping it, and grieve its sorrows without believing they will last forever— and I preach this to myself more than I ever say it out loud.
For we are waiting for something.
Not merely for better circumstances, a healthier body, or a season in which life feels easier. We are waiting for Christ himself. We are waiting for the day when faith becomes sight, when the dead are raised, when the whole creation is liberated from its bondage to decay. When the things we have only glimpsed in moments of joy become the unbroken reality of our lives.
Come, Lord Jesus.
Come, and finish what you began. Come, and put an end to the slow unmaking of everything you made good. Come, and give us bodies that no longer betray us, hearts that no longer fear loss, and a world in which no one must sit apart from the table because of the frailty of their flesh. Come, and let us rejoice without the shadow of goodbye.
Come, and wipe away every tear.
Not because our tears were foolish. Not because our earthly joys were unimportant. But because you have promised a day when nothing good will be lost, nothing evil will remain, and nothing beautiful will fade.
Until then, let us be grateful for the good things. Let us love tenderly, serve our neighbours and peers faithfully, work and study diligently, and receive each day's mercies with wonder. Let us not despise the little joys because they are temporary, nor cling to them as though they could save us. Let us allow them to turn our eyes towards the One from whom every good gift comes, because even the greatest of these joys are only a foretaste of the joy of belonging to Christ.
And when the ache returns—when our bodies are weary, when the world feels cruel, when something beautiful passes, or when happiness itself reminds us how fragile it is—let us remember that the story is not over. The world is not yet what it will be. We are not yet what we will be. And Christ has not yet finished making all things new.
Everything under the sun is fading. But Christ is not.
One day, the waiting will end. We will no longer have to be brave in the face of decay. We will no longer catch glimpses of glory and watch them disappear. We will see our King, and we will finally be home. Until that day, let us live gratefully, suffer faithfully, and long without shame for the world to come.
For the deepest answer to Ecclesiastes is not that we must learn to live with everything passing away. It is that, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, everything that ought never to have been lost will one day be restored. Come, Lord Jesus. We have tasted your goodness here. Teach us to be faithful until we taste it in full.
