By the time it was seven o’clock in the evening, I finished watching the last episode and last season of the TV show Psych. Eight seasons of that quirky show and now I had nothing to do. After contemplating what I should do with the rest of my evening, I felt this pull on my heart to go spend time in worship and prayer with God.
I asked God what I should read and He simply said to open my Bible and start reading. Of course, the first thing that the pages open to is Proverbs 31 or in other words the illustration of a Woman of God. In my mind I was thinking, “Really God? What on earth do you want to teach me through this? I’ve read it a few times before and it’s great, but Lord I don’t feel like this is the right passage to read right now.”
So I read through Proverbs 31 and the book of Ecclesiastes was staring right at me, on the next page. Out of the blue, these words just came to mind, “Now that you have read who you are, I want you to read who I am”.
I was pretty taken by this statement that God had said and I was also confused. I had never really thought that the book of Ecclesiastes shows who God is in depth, but I was curious to see what He wanted to teach me. Yes, I have the NIV Study Bible, so I “cheated” and looked at the overview of the book. Ecclesiastes is a book that, “reveals the wisdom teacher [the author of Ecc.] and what he has discovered about the meaninglessness of every human endeavor without God at the center of one’s life” (NIV).
I was still pretty confused, but God told me to read it… all 12 chapters. The description of the first chapter was “Everything is meaningless”. I couldn’t help, but laugh and think that this is going to be interesting.
I kept reading and I was taken by this verse:
I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind
Ecclesiastes 1: 14 (NIV).
There were two things that struck me in this verse, “under the sun” and “chasing after the wind.”
I counted how many times “under the sun” was written and it came to a total of 23 (give or take). I then began to think about how the Holy Spirit is also compared to the wind. I realized that both of these are intertwined.
The words “under heaven” were only written a few times, but “under the sun” was addressed far more; “under the sun” is meaning the things that are known on earth. The knowledge, sin and earthly deeds that are present here. God speaks through this metaphor to distinguish the difference between what is earthly and what is heavenly.
The other part that struck me was “chasing after the wind”. Throughout the Bible, the Holy Spirit is compared to the wind, but in this verse the wind is considered a foolish thing. Again, God uses this to compare the difference from what is earthly or heavenly. It’s a reminder that we can confuse God’s spirit from the spirit of the world. They are completely different, but we tend to lose sight on how to distinguish them.
As I continued to read, I was again struck by this verse:
Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter everything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few
Ecclesiastes 5: 2 (NIV).
I was taken back by this because God is loving, gracious and caring, but this verse is almost contradicting. As I thought about it more, it made sense. God cares about all of our concerns, but He desires our full attention and heart, not our gossip. We get to experience the fullness of God's attention, when we give our full attention to him. In other words, we can get down to the nitty-gritty. God already knows everything that we are thinking, but when we come to meet him in prayer, we can focus on and speak the words that are most important, without excess distractions.
