The end is better than the beginning

From the low point that was Ecclesiastes 6, in which we were confronted with the bleak realities of life, the writer now starts the long, slow journey towards a place of greater positivity. Don’t expect too much from this chapter, however. Not everything we find here is reassuring. There is still a long way to go.

This chapter is entitled Wisdom and resonates with some of the thinking that we encountered in the Book of Proverbs, especially the use of direct comparison between the wise and the foolish. He opens the chapter with a new idea, however. The idea that the end is better than the beginning. The end of life is better than the beginning of life.

A good name is better than fine perfume,
and the day of death better than the day of birth.
It is better to go to a house of mourning
than to go to a house of feasting,
for death is the destiny of everyone;
the living should take this to heart.  Ecclesiastes 7:1-2

I’m with the writer here. Don’t get me wrong. I love a good celebration and the birth of a new baby is a wonderful thing to celebrate. But there’s something really special about a funeral. Something profoundly significant. It is the opportunity to celebrate a life well lived and to give thanks for a person and their contribution to our lives in a way that we do at no other time. It’s a time when emotions are raw and pretence is stripped back and people connect in an honest way in their grief. There’s a sense of privilege in sharing with the family at this most difficult time, in showing support just by being present. And it’s a valuable reminder of the truth of life. That life is fragile. Life is short. Life is a gift that should never be taken for granted.

Whilst a funeral is an opportunity to look back over a life, it is not good to spend too much time looking back over our own lives in a nostalgic way –

Do not say, ‘Why were the old days better than these?’
For it is not wise to ask such questions.  Ecclesiastes 7:10

Living in the past means we cannot fully live in the present. However good the past was – and it is often not as good as we recall it to be – the present is all that we have. All that we can be sure of.

In the middle section of Ecclesiastes 7, in verses 13-25, it’s as if the writer is telling us to relax a little. Develop a more laidback attitude to life.

None of us can understand God. None of us can change what He’s done.

So why bother trying?

Good times come and bad times come and God allows them both.

So why stress about it?

No one can ever work out what’s going to happen to them in the future.

So why bother trying?

Good people suffer; bad people prosper. It happens.

So why try to make sense of it? 

There’s no point being over-wise or over-righteous (and certainly not over-wicked either).

So why take things to extremes?

There’s no one on earth who’s never got anything wrong.

So stop being so hard on yourself.

People will talk about you like you’ve talked about other people. It’s a fact of life.

So don’t listen.

No one will ever arrive at being fully wise.

So why bother trying too hard?

And to finish. The very last verse of the chapter. The final truth for today.

This only have I found:
God created mankind upright,
but they have gone in search of many schemes.  Ecclesiastes 7:29

Let us never be fooled into thinking that God got it wrong. He created humans in the most perfect way, to live in harmony and play their part in the whole of His creation. But free will allowed us to decide to do it our own way, rather than God’s. We messed it up, not God. In God’s kingdom, people are finding a way back to living in the way we were created to live and eventually, God’s kingdom will reign and perfection will be restored. That’s what we pray for when we pray ‘Let your kingdom come’ – that God’s right way would seep into our world today and that the day will come when God’s kingdom will be restored on earth.

TO DO: Write a list of all the things that you are stressing about over which you have absolutely no control. Then decide what to do with the list…talk to someone or God about it; burn it; tear it up into tiny pieces, post it…whatever.