Ecclesiastes 7:2 It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of everyone; the living should take this to heart.
Sometimes when we look at things in life, they just don’t make sense. We see injustice and scratch our heads in disbelief. Our best solutions and efforts so often seem to fall short. The more government programs there are to help the poor, the worse off they seem to be. What is going on?
I think that is because we live in a world that is upside down. Since those first choices of the Garden-dwellers, we have been living in a world not as it was designed to be. It is broken awaiting the Great Repair when Jesus returns. But we try to make things work, but our solutions are missing key components.
One of the upside down lessons that our text points out is that those who face their own mortality live more productive and fruitful lives. We live with an eye to eternity. We know there is more than this life filled with suffering and contradiction. We know it is broken. We know the sinfulness of the human heart, because we see it in ourselves.
Several times in the book of Ecclesiastes we read about the advantage of looking the reality of death straight in the face. We will all go there at some point in time. No matter our status in life, we will die. As Bill Murray’s character’s young friend Siggy Marvin says in the movie What About Bob, “We’re all going to die.”
When I worked as a hospital chaplain a number of years ago, my perspective on life shifted even further than I had expected. I embraced death. I settled the issue with Jesus, and since them I have rarely thought of death as something to be feared. I might have an earthly regret or two, but I know they will fade when eternity hits me.
The writer of Ecclesiastes is on a journey to show that nothing that is limited in scope to this planet can possibly satisfy the longing of the human heart. And until we face the reality of death, we might continue to delude ourselves into grasping for temporary solutions to this most eternal of problems. There is only one solution he offers.
The writer offers a two-sided solution. The first side is to enjoy the life God has given you here and now. Live godly, honor Him and each other. Make the most of this temporary life by living in such a way as to demonstrate that you know this life will end and there is an eternity waiting. Live the values of eternity now. This is a life of fulfillment, no matter if it is filled with sorrow or with joy.
The second side of his solution is to grasp lightly to this world, since it can’t provide the answers your heart desires. Only the LORD can provide that answer, and only in our relationship with Him. If we don’t understand that “we will all die,” then we never face that fact that we are accountable to the LORD for our conduct here in this life. We will always be grasping at the wind.
None of us likes to think about our death. We as a culture, and for the most part as human beings, avoid facing it because we innately know that we aren’t designed to die. The universal gesture when death happens suddenly is to look up and utter the question “Why?” Where does that come from? Who put the question there?
One day, for every one of us, death of this physical body and connection to this physical world will come to an end. But we will continue to live, either in God’s presence experiencing life as it was meant to be experienced, or apart from God’s presence with the absence of all that life was meant to be.
The scary part is that must face our death in order to fully embrace our life. have you done that?
The Arnold Journey 