Hope in Christ, Value in God

Day 144: Ecclesiastes 9-12

After finishing Ecclesiastes today, I'm not quite sure whether or not Solomon reconciles the meaning of life--how he answers the question. At one point, he does say that we cannot understand the work of God who made everything (11:5), from which I infer that we don't understand God's ways and so there really is no answer to Solomon's question to why life is meaningless.

But maybe the reality is that even though our lives may seem meaningless at times, in Christ, we can have hope. We can have a new understanding of the meaningless of our lives. Christ gives us a context of interpreting hard times; he transforms the meaningless, the vanity, into hope. So even though there may not be an answer in Ecclesiastes, we have the advantage of looking at the book through the lens of Christ. Christ brought redemption; he brought hope. He still brings hope today.

It does seem that Solomon reconciled the meaningless of life in that he understands the importance of seeking God. At the end of the book, he claims in Ecclesiastes 12:13: "Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man."