Joy vs Discontent: A Meditation on Ecclesiastes 5 for the Season of Pentecost

He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver;

nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this is also vanity.

When goods increase, they are increased that eat them:

and what good is there to the owners thereof,

saving the beholding of them with their eyes?

The sleep of a labouring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much:

but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep.

There is a sore evil which I have seen under the sun,

namely, riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt.

But those riches perish by evil travail:

and he begetteth a son, and there is nothing in his hand.

As he came forth of his mother's womb,

naked shall he return to go as he came,

and shall take nothing of his labour,

which he may carry away in his hand.

And this also is a sore evil,

that in all points as he came, so shall he go:

and what profit hath he that hath laboured for the wind?

All his days also he eateth in darkness,

 and he hath much sorrow and wrath with his sickness.

 

Behold that which I have seen:

it is good and comely for one to eat and to drink,

and to enjoy the good of all his labour

that he taketh under the sun all the days of his life,

which God giveth him: for it is his portion.

Every man also to whom God hath given riches and wealth,

and hath given him power to eat thereof, and to take his portion,

 and to rejoice in his labour; this is the gift of God.

For he shall not much remember the days of his life;

because God answereth him in the joy of his heart.

 

As the Holy Spirit moved Solomon to write Ecclesiastes, most likely later in his life, he had much to consider.  Solomon was blessed with riches beyond the dreams of most people in history, as well as with wisdom and secular power as the King of Israel at the height of the nation’s prominence. What God had built through his father David’s faith and labors, Solomon had inherited.  David, for all his great military and political conquests, all his Psalms and musical compositions, and all the wealth and political power he had amassed, was laid in a grave at the end of his life; naked had King David come into the world, and naked did he leave.  Solomon could see the same pattern all around him, and knew he would live out that pattern himself.  For all his wealth and wisdom and power, Solomon would take none of the fruits of his labors with him when died, and if death was the common fate of all men, then the question became, “How then shall we live?”

 

Solomon concluded that wisdom was better than foolishness, though both the wise and the fool still die.  Not only did the wise have a better conduct of life in this world than the fool, securing through Divine and Natural Law better individual and communal living conditions through virtue and hard work, but to embrace God’s wisdom was to embrace God through His Word.  Thus the wise were the friends of God, walking by faith in His Word, enlightened by His wisdom, and saved by His grace.  The wise would walk and work and rejoice in this world according to the promises of God, knowing that God had sent them into the world naked, and naked to God would they return, with only the record of their faith and works to follow them into His presence.  The fool, on the contrary, would live in constant misery no matter how much wealth they acquired, because their trust was not in God but in their own works.  Such a life could not be enjoyed because it could never rest nor be content, and ultimately would become a frenetic flurry of disordered passions leading to the despair of death, where all their labors would unavoidably end.  Down deep in the heart of even the most hardened atheist, the fool knows he did not place himself into this world, and he cannot escape an eventual encounter with the One who did.  Death comes for the wise and the fool alike, but the life of each is dramatically different, marked by either friendship or war with God.

 

This is why Jesus would say that it is harder for a rich person who loves and trusts in riches to enter the Kingdom of God, than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.  Not only would the rich fool place his trust in something that could not save him, but his misplaced trust made him an enemy of the only One who could save him.  The wise, on the contrary, no matter how much they had in terms of material blessings, be they a laborer in the fields or the king of an empire, would rejoice in the portion they were given as friends of Almighty God.  Some may be artisans, others business people, others military or police, or any shade of trade under heaven, but friendship with God through trust in the wisdom of His Word would give them both joy and contentment in the fruits of their labors, and thankful hearts to the One who gave them their lives, labors, and fruits.  While the fool would never be satisfied with what he accumulated, living in the bottomless greed and lust of his idolatry to material things, and in gnawing fear of knowing he must eventually lose that which he loves, the wise know that in God they are already the inheritors of all good things, and have no fear of losing the God whom they love.

 

And why such contentment and joy, even in the face of death?  Because what Solomon looked forward in faith to, we look back in faith upon:  the Incarnation of God’s Word and Wisdom in Jesus Christ.  The Wisdom and Word of God, who took flesh and dwelt among us, also took upon himself the death we could not escape, so that death might not be our final victor.  Only Jesus could become one of us, without the sin and weakness inherent in mankind due to our fall; only Jesus could lead His people of all times and places into the wisdom which makes men once again friends of Almighty God; only Jesus could by His own omnipotent power pass through death and return through resurrection never to die again, that His eternal life might be given to all who would follow and trust in Him; only Jesus could be both the source and summit of all divine wisdom, that those who abide in Him by grace through faith, might know joy and contentment in the shadow of hard labors and temporal death.  Jesus, and Him alone, was to be the Light which enlightened every heart to see the path to life, and to turn from the foolish paths of destruction.

 

Despite the world’s constant call to discontent, Jesus speaks a different Word of life and joy to all who will hear him.  Turn off the media and marketing and politics that tell you to search forever for the things that cannot satisfy you, and to accumulate things which you cannot take with you when you leave this world.  Forget the fevered pursuit of titles, wealth, and prestige, of trophies that will clutter your shelves one day, and another day be cast by others into the trash.  Look away from the sirens of the age who call to you in dulcet tones toward the rocks which will destroy you, knowing that idolatry of anything in this world leads only to misery and death.  Look instead to the One who loves you enough to die for you, who has loved you from before the foundation of the world, and will love you longer than the stars of heaven shall shine.  Hear the Word and Wisdom of God come to you, making satisfaction for all your failings, and ushering you into a new life which transcends the highest joys and lowest pains of our time in this world.  Know the One who has always known you, that your joy and contentment may be complete in all He has given to you, now and unto ages of ages.  Amen.