20 Nothing new

 

Eccelsiastes 1:9 What has been will be again,
    what has been done will be done again;
    there is nothing new under the sun.

I attended a funeral today. Later after reading a few words on Eccliasiastes which I wrote some time ago, I got to thinking how everything has changed. and yet nothing has changed. While it is true that the car has replaced horse and donkey as a means of transport. Computers surpassing ancient modes of communication and Aeroplanes that can take us to the other side of the word in a few hours, yet the fundamental thigs in life have not changed. People still have children, children grow up and find partners and have more children. People invest time in their work seeking primarily a way to make money to survive comfortably, and if they are lucky a career they can believe in and find satisfaction in their toil. People still undergo a raft of emotions and behaviours: happiness, contentment, greed, anger, love, lust, hate, jealousy etc. 

I think this is what the preacher was touching on. Not so much the technological advances of which the 20th century brought us into an era never seen before, but that he understood the base instincts of humanity and our desires would always be the same. A man or woman sitting comfortably in their penthouse flat idly watching TV all their spare hours from work and sleep may be no happier than the person 3000 years ago farming their land and enjoying the company of their extended family. 

The Covid lockdown has shown us many thing. The kindness of some, the pulling together of many, the heartaches of realising our mortality, the fear of death which despite our efforts we have only ever managed to postpone by a few years with advances in medicines and surgery. All the other emotions and behaviours remain. As we all try to pull together we see people in the UK and USA get upset by politics, and align themselves with not only people they do not know, but some they would not normally even give house room to. 

The Preacher did not write Ecclesiastes to depress us, but as someone who had experienced joy, wealth, freedom, and so many other things, that in the end the only thing that matters is that God made us, and made us to appreciate Him in His world. To praise Him as creator and enjoy the world he born us into. Appreciating each other as children of God and being content in the life we have is of more worth than all the riches in the world if they do not bring happiness and contentment. You only have to look at the long list of celebrity tragedies to understand that happiness if not found in things.

Ecc 2:24 A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, 25. for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? 26. To the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

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