Life Under The Sun
What is crooked cannot be straightened and what is lacking cannot be counted. Ecclesiastes 1:15
Be Counted – When you read this verse, do you say to yourself, “Well, of course, you can’t count what isn’t there. That’s just obvious!” You’re right, but if this is nothing more than a truism, why include it in the text? What is the point behind such a pointless assertion?*
The answer to this question is found in the context of Ecclesiastes 1:14. The speaker claims he has investigated everything that is done under the sun and concludes that there is ultimately no meaning to any of it. Don’t be too quick to object. Let the thought sink in and you will discover the truth behind the Hebrew combination of lo (not) and mena (to number, to reckon).
Ecclesiastes is one of the hardest books in the Bible to swallow. Many believers go through theological contortions in order to come up with a positive spin on its message. It’s hard to escape the overriding pessimism of the speaker’s relentless refrain, “It’s all meaningless.” Yes, there are glimpses of God here and there, but these asides don’t do much to throttle the steamroller effect of a life of ceaseless repetition. Ecclesiastes is a book about life under the sun; life without a God who really cares. Ecclesiastes is a book about the final verdict that life grinds to a complete end in the grave. It is about life that does not know the redemptive work of God nor the immanence of His grace. Tremper Longman says that the general message of Ecclesiastes is this: “There is something fundamentally wrong with life on earth . . . [and] the essentially flawed nature of the world is something self-evident and cannot be disputed.”
Reflect for just a moment on the real condition of those who struggle to survive life without a relationship with God. Isn’t everything Ecclesiastes says the perfect description of this long trudging pathway to death? What good is any of your work, your possessions, your legacy, your pursuit of pleasure? It is all swallowed up by the grave. It all vanishes under the sands of time. The best you can do is hope for a few moments of relief from the inevitable. Don’t dismiss Ecclesiastes. It is the most powerful evangelistic tract in the Bible. The fact that we all want more than what life reluctantly doles out is the motivation to seek a God Who cares.
What is missing can’t be counted. Yes, Ecclesiastes is absolutely true – for anyone who does not live under the Son. If the Son is missing from a life under the sun, there is not much point to all of it, is there? Now, aren’t you glad you know Him?
*Pointlessness is one of the points of Ecclesiastes The book often uses puns to make the point J
