There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? (Ecclesiastes 2: 24-26, ESV)
What’s your attitude toward playing in the wind? Depending on where you call home, the wind might or might not feature that prominently.
Chicago is famously called “The Windy City.” It turns out it doesn’t even rank in the top ten. Dodge City is the windiest city in America. Situated in “tornado alley,” Dodge City averages wind speeds of 15 mph but see wind gusts up to 44 mph in November and up to 63 mph in March.
If you’ve regularly played golf in West Texas, you could teach the rest of us a thing or two about how to ride the wind, hold it up against the wind, and when choosing one over the other is the most prudent.
As everyone knows, playing golf is played in God’s great outdoors. As such, the elements figure prominently in our game. Underestimating the strength of a right-to-left wind can prove hazardous to your emotional health the moment you realize your ball is headed toward the hazard to your left.
It has often been wittily remarked that the “pursuit of happiness” is like “chasing the wind.” The unspoken truth slightly hidden in this analogy is that your chance of finding happiness by chasing happiness is doomed to failure.
More straightforwardly, your chance of finding happiness without Christ makes as much sense as your chances of lassoing the wind.
The book of Ecclesiastes analogizes our desire for satisfaction, pleasure, and happiness with “chasing the wind.” It is evident that Mick Jagger “can’t get no satisfaction,” but that doesn’t mean profound satisfaction is unavailable to the rest of the human race.
Usually, we make two different and opposite mistakes when reading Ecclesiastes and/or thinking about happiness, pleasure, and satisfaction.
On the one hand, we often understand Solomon to teach that the enjoyment of “fine wines, possessions, and songs” are tawdry at best and evil at worst. Thus, we think the godly life is best pursued by abstaining from earthly pleasures.
On the other hand, we can misunderstand Solomon to be saying something like the following: Since life is “meaningless,” we should “eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.” It is true that he says these things, but is that what he means? Nope!
Solomon is examining the human condition in relation to pleasure. He wants to remind us that life lived purely “under the sun” (a secular life without a love for God) has no chance of finding deep satisfaction or sustained joy in what, as it turns out, are God’s gracious gifts of song, a fine wine, sex, virtuous wealth, and work.
In truth, life would be pretty dull and empty without these and the many other gifts lavishly granted to us by such a generous God.
A life with the finest wines, stock portfolios rivaling Warren Buffett, beautiful spouses, magnificent homes, and a handicap of plus five will never satisfy our hearts apart from a vital relationship with God.
Solomon is not addressing the issues of illicit sex, drunkenness, or idolatrous wealth. It should be evident that those are off-limits to the follower of Christ.
Solomon is eager to point out that chasing after God will, in the end, enrich every other endeavor and pursuit. After every attempt at finding happiness without God, he said, “I hated life” (Eccl. 2:17).
Yet, regarding a life properly ordered by a deep love for God, he said:
There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil (work). This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?
Prayer: Teach us to enjoy life by enjoying you!