Ecclesiastes 1:1-18
Everything is Meaningless
1 The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem:
2 “Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”
3 What do people gain from all their labors
at which they toil under the sun?
4 Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.
6 The wind blows to the south
and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
ever returning on its course.
7 All streams flow into the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
there they return again.
8 All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
nor the ear its fill of hearing.
9 What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there anything of which one can say,
“Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.
11 No one remembers the former generations,
and even those yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow them.
12 I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. 13 I applied my mind to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under the heavens. What a heavy burden God has laid on mankind! 14 I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.
15 What is crooked cannot be straightened;
what is lacking cannot be counted.
16 I said to myself, “Look, I have increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before me; I have experienced much of wisdom and knowledge.” 17 Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind.
18 For with much wisdom comes much sorrow;
the more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes 12:1-14
Remember Your Creator
1 Remember your Creator
in the days of your youth,
before the days of trouble come
and the years approach when you will say,
“I find no pleasure in them”—
2 before the sun and the light
and the moon and the stars grow dark,
and the clouds return after the rain;
3 when the keepers of the house tremble,
and the strong men stoop,
when the grinders cease because they are few,
and those looking through the windows grow dim;
4 when the doors to the street are closed
and the sound of grinding fades;
when people rise up at the sound of birds,
but all their songs grow faint;
5 when people are afraid of heights
and of dangers in the streets;
when the almond tree blossoms
and the grasshopper drags itself along
and desire no longer is stirred.
Then people go to their eternal home
and mourners go about the streets.
6 Remember him—before the silver cord is severed,
and the golden bowl is broken;
before the pitcher is shattered at the spring,
and the wheel broken at the well,
7 and the dust returns to the ground it came from,
and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
8 “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher.
“Everything is meaningless!”
9 Not only was the Teacher wise, but he also imparted knowledge to the people. He pondered and searched out and set in order many proverbs. 10 The Teacher searched to find just the right words, and what he wrote was upright and true.
11 The words of the wise are like goads, their collected sayings like firmly embedded nails—given by one shepherd. 12 Be warned, my son, of anything in addition to them.
Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.
13 Now all has been heard;
here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the duty of all mankind.
14 For God will bring every deed into judgment,
including every hidden thing,
whether it is good or evil.
Many, many years ago the author Solomon started out his Book of Ecclesiastes and told us that life is meaningless, meaningless, utterly meaningless, everything is meaningless...Today, as we see all the modernization and technology that we have at our fingertips, we seem to have reached a time in history where machines are a very important part of our lives every single day...Not that machines have not been important in the past, but today, for example the smartphone and the internet seems to be something some cannot live without on any day...There are tablets and computers and Smart TVs all playing some sort of important role in our lives...And more technology is coming...There is evidence that man will someday create a machine that is smarter than any man...In fact, IBM has created a computer called Watson that is a machine IBM says is a natural extension of what humans can do at their best...
Where is all this technology taking us...Ray Kurzweil in his book the Age of Spiritual Machines, says in the future (and he wrote this book years ago), man will be imbedded with more and more technology to keep us alive and going and we will have many body parts helping us in our daily living and in staying alive...If this happens, man might someday become part virtual machine, as we have more and more imbedded parts in our bodies, to keep us alive...
One might even ask, are we at a point when life is being hollowed out with all the things that are around us...When Solomon was King and later when Jesus walked the earth, we were not surrounded by technology and information, as we are today...Things seemed to be more focused on the Spiritual...But today, with all we have going on, live seems to be more hollowed...The sacred and holy get dimmed by certain things and can become obstacles between us and God...The Light gets dimmed...Maybe in all this, when we think about God and think He is hiding, maybe it is us hiding behind all the technology and modernization around us...Are we being diluted from the meaning of life and are we not taking the time to seek God and the purpose of life?...Will we get to the point where life becomes more and more like we are on autopilot, only to remember that in our last few years we have not lived at all?...
Solomon, ends his Book of Ecclesiastes telling us to remember our Creator...He tells us that there is a God who created us who thinks and acts in this world...One who will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether good or evil...There is more to life than staying busy and keeping up, as the newest technology helps keep us up to date with what is going on all around the world...There is our Creator and His Son who mean more to us than any new technology, and They make all the difference in life and when we reflect on life...Remember Him before the silver cord is severed, and the golden bowl is broken; before the pitcher is shattered at the spring, and the wheel broken at the well, and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it to us...