As I read the Book of Ecclesiastes it makes me feel that the world is a sad place to live and grow up and grow old...The book is lamenting to me...The book is about how quickly our lives pass and the meaning we get in life and the meaning we put into life...Solomon starts the book out lamenting about life and constantly saying that life is meaningless...Then the teacher adds “Utterly meaningless!...Everything is meaningless.”...What do people gain from all their labors and all their works at which they toil under the sun?...Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever...I feel alone, when I read this book...When we look back at our lives, if we are lucky to have lived many "good" years, what is important, and what is meaningless, as the author writes...The author has man seemingly always restless and searching...Man searches for the meaning of life...The author makes his point...The author writes how calloused, and how cold life would be without God, and he does it in an apathetic way...There are not many uplifting verses for me in the total book of Ecclesiastes...
And as the author searches for his happiness in life...He looks at the hard questions of life...He struggles to find meaning in the time we spend on earth...One can go late in their own life wondering what is life all about...What is the real point of life?...What does give life meaning...What is the purpose of me being here?...Have I lived a meaningful life?...
I might say that there is a small amount of spice sprinkled from the Sermon on the Mount in the Book of Ecclesiastes and especially in the conclusion of the matter of Ecclesiastes...The teacher of Ecclesiastes does not make life look fun and happy...I do not see a lot of happiness or verses to smile about in this book...The Teacher who wrote this book was wise and imparted knowledge to the people...The Teacher searched for the right words and wrote what was upright and true to him...And like this Teacher we want better and wiser answers...We want the world somehow to work and be better...The world is in disorder...But we want things to be good and fair and just in the world...We want life to have meaning...
And throughout the Book of Ecclesiastes, with all its sadness, it has a real feel for life...The book reflects much about real life...It addresses how man searches for meaning in life...What is our purpose?...And after much reflection and thought and writing, life is meaningless without God...Those who go through life without seeking and finding God have a void in their lives...It will be hard to find any meaning or purpose without Him...As we finish reading the Book of Ecclesiastes, we see the author concludes with our need for God...St. Augustine said our hearts will not rest until they rest with Thee...We need our Father and His Son for peace and comfort for our hearts...We need our Father for meaning...