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Morning Devotion for the Season after Pentecost
June 7, 2024
Reading: Ecclesiastes 5:1-3
Guard your steps when you go to the house of God; to draw near to listen is better than the sacrifice offered by fools, for they do not know how to keep from doing evil. Never be rash with your mouth nor let your heart be quick to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you upon earth; therefore let your words be few. For dreams come with many cares, and a fool’s voice with many words.
Meditation - Peter Vanderveen
Count me as one of the few who finds great benefit – and joy – from reading the much-maligned book of Ecclesiastes.
Ecclesiastes is most known for providing a common reading for Burial Services (or, therewith, for being the most commonly mispronounced book in the Bible). It is also considered to be unremittingly dour and cynical. All of life is a vanity; nothing of it endures; we fill our time with efforts that, ultimately, will come to nothing. So, that said… I hope you have a lovely day!
One must ask, however, to what end was the book written? Was it intended to be no more than a brutally honest assessment of life when it’s confronted by mortality – a mortality that refers not just to individuals but to all that exists within the constraints of time? The writer certainly strips the gloss from all the ways that we try to avoid the inevitability of demise. Trying to stave off grim death, we dream dreams, conjuring up many, expansive but false visions that are meant to assure us of our own lasting importance. The writer of Ecclesiastes, however, won’t allow us our illusions. And part of the power of the book is that the writer does this decisively and succinctly. He doesn’t waste words. He doesn’t need to.
The result of this sweeping away of our dreams, though, isn’t despair; and the writer doesn’t try to drive us there. What he does is open space for God. With all the clutter of our own imagined persevering removed, what remains is only the will and the love of God, who (need it be said?) is not limited as we are. For God inhabits a different space, which is not accessible for us. And heaven is not a replica of our world, set in perfect order. It’s not within our ability to even picture. Heaven can only be said to be God’s gift to us of God’s immortality. Before which, for now, we can only be silent. And awed.
And this takes a lot of messy theorizing off our plate – which allows us to live with far greater integrity. For we grant more integrity to the world when we recognize that it can’t be forever. And we grant more integrity to God when none of our greatest hopes can come to fruition without God’s grace. And we frame our own lives with more integrity when we can gather up all that is passing away within the realm of God’s redemption. It’s remarkable how easily these recognitions can slip our minds. Ecclesiastes reminds us of the most essential things.
And, if this isn’t enough, as we will all be swept out under the pull of an election year undertow, simply match up the last sentence above with all the vitriol that will be spouted out for political ends.
Prayer
O God,
it is good to be alive and numbered with those whom you have made,
I thank you for the gift of life.
O God,
it is good to count in word and deed for ends beyond our own;
I thank you for your use of me if I have been of any service to your purposes.
O God,
it is good to rejoice and to be glad,
I thank you for each person, for each experience of life,
that has brought me happiness.
Miles Lowell Yates: Give Us Grace
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