Oct 19, 2010 Ecclesiastes 9:1-10:7

I am a couple days behind, so sorry. I will try to catch up here. Its really the 21st. Its the first chilly day of the season - I think I saw its in the mid 50s, brrr. In March we will think this is a heat wave :-), I am glad God created the seasons. And it makes me think. A creatures lifetime can be just a few days - like an insect. A flower blooms for a few days or weeks then it dies. Man lives 80 or so years, Man can't decide how old the earth is. But we do know one thing - God lives forever.  This ties in with what we are reading in Ecclesiastes.  

Chapter 9 

Verses 1-2 All of us share a common destiny - the good  and the bad. And what do we all share? Death.

Verses 3-6 These are tough verses, after we die, we can change nothing. Not our hate nor or our love. Solomon tends to focus on evil here, not sure why. 

Verses 7-10 So we are to enjoy life, eat and drink with a joyful heart. Enjoy your wife. Enjoy goodness as God would intend - for verse 8 says to wear white and anoint your head with oil. 

Verses 11-12 The race of life comes to all of us. We all eat, work, sleep, play.  And we do not know when our time comes to die.

Verses 13-18 Wisdom is better than folly but we do not recognize it. Many times we ignore wisdom. Maybe it makes us uncomfortable, maybe we fear standing up for what is right instead just doing what everyone else does.  One man's wisdom may save a city but we don't recognize the man because he is poor. Not loud. Not calling attention to himself. Hmmm, now that is something to think about.

Chapter 10 Verses 1-3 A dead fly can ruin the smell of expensive perfume. This just came to my mind - salmonella poisoning forced the recall of half a billion eggs a couple months ago.  I can't imagine half a billion of anything!  I heard Dr. Phil say one time that for every negative comment you say to your child, you have to praise a child 1000 times to make up for the bad comment. So yes, foolishness and evil causes great harm even in little doses. 

Verse 4 - Don't quit if your boss gets mad at you. Just be calm and eventually he will calm down. And of course strive not to make the same mistake again. On the other side of the coin - we shouldn't fly off the handle at others mistakes because we all make them.

Verses 5-7 Solomon discusses another evil - leaders give fools leadership positions and people who should be in leadership positions are given nothing. And I thought that was just a 20th century phenomenon. And the point is - man's wisdom may not be a wise decision.

Father God, these verses were tough for me to understand today. We all live, we all die, we all make foolish mistakes. We thank you that Jesus died on the cross to save us from eternity without you. We thank you today for the changing seasons. We enjoy the cooler weather, watching the farmers harvest their crops, and providing us with another season of food to nourish us. We thank you for the bible that was written many years ago but still relevant to us today. Amen.