Post from July 23, 2023

”👟 RSD 1181 ✅ Today’s Verse: “However many years anyone may live, let them enjoy them all. But let them remember the days of darkness, for there will be many. Everything to come is meaningless.” — Ecclesiastes 11:8

Ecclesiastes 11 gives some good life advice. Here it is via The Message. “Be generous: Invest in acts of charity. Charity yields high returns. Don’t hoard your goods; spread them around. Be a blessing to others. This could be your last night. When the clouds are full of water, it rains. When the wind blows down a tree, it lies where it falls. Don’t sit there watching the wind. Do your own work. Don’t stare at the clouds. Get on with your life. Just as you’ll never understand the mystery of life forming in a pregnant woman. So you’ll never understand the mystery at work in all that God does. Go to work in the morning and stick to it until evening without watching the clock. You never know from moment to moment how your work will turn out in the end. Oh, how sweet the light of day. And how wonderful to live in the sunshine! Even if you live a long time, don’t take a single day for granted. Take delight in each light-filled hour, Remembering that there will also be many dark days And that most of what comes your way is smoke. You who are young, make the most of your youth. Relish your youthful vigor. Follow the impulses of your heart. If something looks good to you, pursue it.
But know also that not just anything goes; You have to answer to God for every last bit of it. Live footloose and fancy-free—You won’t be young forever. Youth lasts about as long as smoke.” — Ecclesiastes 11:1-10

Have you ever heard the graduation speech-turned-song “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)?” It’s 1998 goodness and gives a similar vibe to Ecclesiastes 11–it’s even on the soundtrack to “Romeo & Juliet”…yes, the Leonardo DiCaprio/Claire Danes “R&J.” Yeah, today’s verse is Ecclesiastes 11:8, but I thought the whole chapter was a vibe. King Solomon wrote it (not the 1998 thing, the Bible one), and he was known for wisdom. Wisdom, “the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment” (Google/Oxford). You know, the thing we are all SO sure we’ve attained by…oh, I don’t know, sixteen? And, as we grow, we realize that we didn’t know so much back then as compared to now. And, as we grow, we realize at 35 that we didn’t know so much back at 25. It’s like the more you learn, the more you realize that you don’t know. True experts in any field will tell you that, and, if they don’t: they don’t know enough to know they don’t know, ergo they’re not really experts. Trippy, huh? I tell my babies (11th/12th grade) all the time that the pursuit of anything new means that you’re going to be wrong a lot. So, if you can’t get used to being wrong, research and innovation will be beyond you. Yeah, nobody likes being wrong, but it’s something healthy to get used to—comforting, even. We don’t have to know everything; we just have to be willing to learn. As we grow, we find that of increasing importance. We realize that I’m learning isn’t a means to an end but rather a way to live life as best as we can. So, as we grow, we realize that there were so many things we didn’t know “back then,” and sometimes it’s humorous, maybe a little embarrassing, but we find it worth the journey of reflection. But, this journey isn’t always a pleasant one; there are things in our past that we wish we would’ve gotten right. For most of us, the downside to this is: as we grow in wisdom, one of the things we realize we really didn’t know “back then” is how to spend our time.

Here you go, Hootie and the Blowfish fans. 🎶 “Time why you walk away, like a friend with somewhere to go? You left me crying. Can you teach me ’bout tomorrow and all the pain and sorrow running free? ‘Cause tomorrow’s just another day, and I don’t believe in time.”🎶 The sage advice from today’s verse talks about how to spend your time and how to focus your perspective. Although I might be oversimplifying (I mean, now we all have that Hootie song stuck in our heads), here’s the idea of today’s verse. Everyone’s life is filled with good and bad days (moments, etc.). It’s important for us to enjoy our days, especially our good days because that helps to enrich us in our spirit and will help us to develop in our faith journey things like joy, peace, gentleness, patience (hey, it’s easier to be patient when things are going smoothly). It also frees us up to concentrate on helping others because we are less burdened by the day-to-day. Embrace life; try new things; go for your goals. But, verse 9 warns us that not everything that looks fun is good for us, so YOLO isn’t the best advice. Think about it: you could be the next person with a “No Regerts” tattoo or something off the wall on a “Friday the 13th” special at your local tattoo parlor. That’s what the “everything to come is meaningless” in verse 8 is getting at. Basically, enjoy life, but do your best to spend your time on things that will make you happy long-term. And, you’re like, “How do I know that this cool new tattoo that I picked off the wall just now won’t do that?” Well, for starters, God can spell “regrets,” and, apart from that, it’s not the tattoo I’m advising against (I have several myself): it’s the impulsivity—hence, the “Friday the 13th pick off the wall” reference. We’re to give thought to what we do. Ephesians 11:9 tells us to, “Follow the impulses of your heart.” And, you’re like, “Wait, it literally says to follow impulses.” That’s true, it does. But, it also warns that we “have to answer to God for every last bit of it.” So, we should follow our hearts, but our hearts should be following God.

It’s like this. Have you ever seen a soap opera? My mom’s favorite is “The Bold and the Beautiful,” and on this soap, there’s a character (Brooke) who has been following her heart since the show’s premiere in 1987. And, you’re thinking, “Ok, what’s the big deal?” Well, among other things, Brooke has been married to seven men on the show, although one of her children isn’t by any of them (but it was her daughter’s husband…so close enough?), and, among these men is a man she’s been married to twice, his son, and his other son…who she has married eight times. Her escapades have destroyed several families and have lead to various calamities on the show…and pain for everyone involved (including her). My point: if a person’s heart isn’t anchored to the things of God, CBS is going to have 9000 episodes worth of material from your mistakes, and, sadly, your fruitless quest for happiness.

Just like you wouldn’t get a random tattoo on the fly with no thought that you’d just want to laser off later (at least you in your 30s probably wouldn’t…18 year old you might’ve had a different outlook lol), we don’t need to be spending a lot of time on things just to take up time—spend time on things that bring you joy…not happiness—joy. Why are we always trying to spend time when we’re younger anyway? We shouldn’t be pursuant to chasing time, making the mundane minutes pass. “Don’t sit there watching the wind. Do your own work. Don’t stare at the clouds. Get on with your life…Go to work in the morning and stick to it until evening without watching the clock. You never know from moment to moment how your work will turn out in the end” — Ephesians 11:4,6. We need to be pursuant to making the most of our time. Now, that doesn’t mean laying on the couch binging Netflix is bad—on the contrary: rest is good for us. But, when we’re actually up doing things, we need to do our best to spend our time on things that will actually matter to us. They don’t have to be big: little things add up. See, chasing happiness is the “smoke” that today’s passage mentions. According to the definition on Compassion International (dot com), “Joy is present, in the moment. Every moment. Happiness is ephemeral and temporary. It’s mostly just passing through.” Moreover, a 2019 article from the New York Times differentiates joy and happiness in the following way. “Joy tends to involve the transcendence of self. Happiness comes from accomplishments. Joy comes when your heart is in another.” I liked this particular verbiage of “your heart is in another.” See, when we focus our hearts on what God wants us to focus on, when we focus on God’s heart, we end up pursuing what God wants us to find. Romans 15:13 tells us that “the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.” God will help us find joy. Better yet—God will show us what true joy is. When we’re not really thinking about things of God and just kind of winging it, we might not find something worthwhile, so we keep looking, and 9000 episodes later, everything’s still a mess.

Speaking of mess, what about the mentions of darkness in today’s verse? I mean—bummer, right? Well, everyone has good days and bad days. People might be like, “Forget the bad!” And, yeah, that might work for a bumper sticker, but that isn’t always 100% the best advice. The more accurate point is to not allow ourselves to dwell in our past bad days. It’s important to acknowledge that we go through tough times. These times are important too because these times do well to cultivate things like kindness and compassion, goodness, faithfulness and self control, trust and hope. It’s in these times that we draw near to the Lord. So, on the happy days (not the TV show…but honestly not too far off), we must remember the faith characteristics we have grown in our not-so-happy days (would’ve made an interesting spinoff though, am I right?).

“Be generous: Invest in acts of charity. Charity yields high returns. Don’t hoard your goods; spread them around. Be a blessing to others. This could be your last night” — Ecclesiastes 11:1-2. This juxtaposition is found in “A Christmas Carol) during Ebenezer Scrooge’s (a rich jerk’s) rant about Christmas to his nephew, Fred (really nice and upbeat guy…just not rich), who is joyful about the holiday. “What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer?” Those words by Scrooge hit like mallets in Victorian England “a year older, and not an hour richer;” Fred doesn’t have the financial security that Scrooge does, and maybe he finds himself worried about it, but Fred holds Christmas and the generosity it encourages in highest esteem. “Though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that Christmas has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, ‘God bless it!’” This declaration of Fred’s (after giving to charity) is hard for Scrooge to comprehend. See, Scrooge thinks he is living in happy days because of his financial status and that Fred is living in darker days. But, as the novel progresses, the reader notices how deeply unhappy Scrooge is compared to Fred, as Scrooge continues to be pursuant to money on Christmas Eve while Fred is looking forward to the holiday with family. Because Fred is concerned with things like love, charity, family, and “goodwill toward men” (Luke 2:14), he exudes joy and kindness whereas Scrooge, corrupted by chasing money, only finds himself colder. Of course, by the novel’s end, Scrooge realizes that the only way to gain any kind of life was to give away what he had been living his life for. By focusing on things like compassion and generosity, Scrooge learns how he’s supposed to be spending his time and is richer for it.

Time. It’s the thing we waste most, crave most, and, upon considering its length, probably the thing that freaks us out most. We’re only allotted so much time on Earth (“Youth lasts about as long as smoke”) where we are doing our best into growing into who God wants us to be. All the days after our time here is what we’re doing our best to prepare for now. That’s why Solomon wanted everyone to do their best with it. To take their time to be kind and generous and compassionate and to serve and to love. God wants us to do His work here so that we’re becoming who we’re meant to be and helping others to do the same. “You never know from moment to moment how your work will turn out in the end.” The hang up I have with time is that God is omnipresent, infinite. On RSD 1133, we talked about infinity. You can’t subtract from infinity because, no matter what number you subtract, you never have less stuff. That’s what we have to look forward to in Heaven. The hymn “Amazing Grace” touches on this. “When we’ve been here ten thousand years, bright, shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we first begun.” Those are all the days we have to look forward to, and God wants us to be as prepared as we can be. So, for any of us growing in wisdom and looking back with “regert” on how we spent our time, whether it be 15 years ago or last month, but we can always be intentional with our time going forward and grow into who God wants us to be. “His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning” — Lamentations 3:22-23. See, the world will tell us that our time always grows shorter with each passing day, and that it’s too late to do stuff; so we might be like, “Well, what can I do now? I should’ve started earlier. There’s no point in changing now.” But, what the world neglects to take into account is that we are going to spend eternity with God. So, despite all of our yesterdays, our souls have infinitely more tomorrows ahead of us, and it’s that time we are supposed to prepare for; we can take every new day as an opportunity to focus on the things of God and to do His work. If we just come to God, He’ll make the most of our remaining Earth days and set us on the right path for eternity. Don’t get too hung up on time. God doesn’t need it to help us. That Hootie song hits different now, doesn’t it? “I don’t believe in time,” to me, means that it shouldn’t hold us back. Time, the fear of it waning, or, conversely, the false thinking that we still have so much of it on Earth that we don’t need to cherish it, shouldn’t hold us back from running full-speed on the path God wants us to take. That’s the goal, and Earth time will pass anyway, so we shouldn’t worry how much we’ve spent or what we have left. We should just use it as best we can and enjoy our time. You know, this past May, a 72-year-old man became the first of his siblings to graduate college with his 99-year-old mother in the audience at commencement. “Cause tomorrow’s just another day, and I don’t believe in time.””