Volume 34: The View From the Top

Day 138 Devotional

THE VIEW FROM THE TOP

One of the most misunderstood books in the Bible is Ecclesiastes.

Many people read it and walk away wondering why Solomon sounds so gloomy. Some even question why a man blessed by God would spend so much time talking about vanity, frustration, and the emptiness of life.

The answer is found in a phrase Solomon repeats nearly thirty times throughout the book: “under the sun.”

Solomon is examining life from an earthly perspective. In other words, he is asking a simple but profound question: What does life look like if all you focus on is what you can see, touch, earn, accomplish, and experience here on earth?

The answer is sobering and almost saddening. It is a life focused entirely on the temporary while ignoring the eternal.

Solomon was uniquely qualified to answer that question because he had what most people spend their entire lives pursuing. He had wealth, power, influence, wisdom, success, houses, land, servants, and a kingdom unlike any other. He had access to pleasures and opportunities that few people in history have ever experienced.

If earthly things could satisfy the human soul, Solomon would have been the first person to prove it.

Instead, he spent much of Ecclesiastes explaining why they cannot.

To me, Ecclesiastes is the Old Testament version of Jesus asking: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36)

Solomon gained the world and then wrote a book explaining why the world was never enough.

Even when Solomon says that “money answereth all things” (Ecclesiastes 10:19), he is not teaching that money is the answer to life. He is simply acknowledging that money can solve many earthly problems. It can provide food, shelter, transportation, comfort, and opportunity.

What it cannot provide is peace. It cannot heal a broken heart. It cannot forgive sin. It cannot save a soul. It cannot give eternal meaning to a temporary life.

That is why Ecclesiastes remains so powerful today. It is the testimony of a man who climbed every mountain the world promised would make him happy, stood on top of all of them, and came back to tell us, “Don’t put your hope here. I’ve already been there, and it wasn’t enough.”

By the end of the book, Solomon arrives at the conclusion many of us wish he had started with: “Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.” (Ecclesiastes 12:13)

Everything else is temporary. God is the only One who gives life lasting meaning.